The British Masters started out as the Dunlop Masters back in 1946, with the sponsorship from this company lasting until 1982. It’s a 72-hole stroke play tournament that has been staged on the European Tour since the inception of this professional circuit in the early 1970s. It’s always been held in the British Isles, mainly in England, but it was also contested twice in the Republic of Ireland, at Portmarnock in 1959 and 1965.

The inaugural tournament was held at Stoneham Golf Club in Hampshire and it ended in a tie between Scotsman Jimmy Adams and Bobby Locke from South Africa, with both posting identical aggregate scores of 286. It’s not known why a playoff wasn’t held – as this took place in two of the next three editions – and so the first Masters ended up as a shared affair.

Bobby Locke won another Masters in 1954 but he’s not the only multiple winner from South Africa as Cobie Legrange also captured two titles in the 1960s. Australian golfers also featured prominently on the honours board in the competition’s formative years, with Norman Von Nida (1948) and Peter Thomson (1961 and 1968) having their names etched on the trophy.

Into the 1970s and 80s and further Antipodean victories were attributed to Bob Charles at Northumberland in 1972, Graham Marsh on the Duke’s at Woburn in 1979, and Greg Norman at Woburn in 1981 and St Pierre in 1982 – with The Great White Shark the only person apart from Bernard Gallagher (1974/75) to successfully defend the title.

Other non-Europeans to win the event include Americans Lee Trevino (1985) and Bob May (1999), along with Zimbabwean Mark McNulty in 1987, Australian Robert Allenby in 1996 and New Zealander Greg Turner the following year. All the winners so far in the new millennium have been European.

Woburn Golf Club has hosted the British Masters seventeen times in total and the event was played on the Duke’s for ten consecutive editions, starting in 1985. St Pierre in Monmouthshire also staged the championship eight times during the 1970s and early 1980s.

In the early days, the competition was held five times at Little Aston in the West Midlands (between 1947 and 1969) then Forest of Arden in Warwickshire staged the same number of tournaments when it became a favoured Tour stop during the 1990s and early years of the new millennium.

After the championship went into hibernation between 2009 and 2014, it resumed at its old stomping ground on the Marquess course at Woburn, hosted by Ian Poulter. The idea going forward is to have leading British golfers promote the Masters at a club with which they have some sort of association so Lee Westwood, who has been attached for some time to Close House in Northumberland, hosted both the 2017 and 2020 editions of the competition at that club in the northeast of England.