Who won four consecutive Open Championships from 1868 to 1872?

Who won four consecutive Open Championships from 1868 to 1872? Tom Morris Jr. — better known as Young Tom Morris — won the titles in 1868, 1869, 1870 and 1872.

The sequence includes no championship in 1871. Morris had won the Challenge Belt three times in succession, so under the competition rules he was allowed to keep it; without a trophy available, the Open was not staged that year.

All four of his victories came at Prestwick Golf Club, the tournament’s original home. His first win, in 1868, came when he was only 17, making him the youngest Open champion, a record that still stands. He defeated his father, Old Tom Morris, by three strokes that year.

Young Tom’s achievement remains unique: no golfer has since won four successive Open Championships. He also won the first recorded hole-in-one in Open history, at Prestwick in 1869. The Claret Jug was introduced in 1873, and Morris’s name became the first engraved on it because of his 1872 victory.