The Open de France will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its long and illustrious history at Le Golf National in Paris this year with an increased prize fund of €4,000,000 and a new sponsor in the form of power company Alstom.
Those two important announcements will attach a distinctive sense of ‘joie de vivre’ to the oldest Open Championship on continental Europe, which began in 1906 with a victory by one of France’s golfing greats, Arnaud Massy, and sees a modern day French favourite, Jean-Francois Remesy, defend the title from June 29 – July 2, 2006.
This will be the 90th playing of the Open de France Alstom – only the advent of the First and Second World Wars halted the tournament’s progress – and the event has certainly come a long way since its first staging when Massy triumphed at La Boulie.
The French hero from Biarritz went on to defend the title in 1907 – the same year he became the first foreign player to win The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool Golf Club which, coincidentally, returns to The Open roster of venues this summer for the first time since 1967.
Now, in 2006, with the backing of Alstom, a market leader in the production of environmentally friendly technologies in the worlds of power and rail transport infrastructure, the Open de France is one of the most lucrative events on The European Tour International Schedule.
The increased prize fund of €4,000,000 caps what can only be described as a staggering rate of growth since the Open de France Alstom became part of The European Tour International Schedule in 1972, when the prize money totaled €15,428.
Even more startling is the rate of prize money growth in the last ten years, which is more than 400 per cent. In 1996, Robert Allenby of Australia took the first prize of €140,000 from a prize fund of €840,000, while this year’s champion will pocket €666,660 from the €4,000,000 on offer.
Alstom will be hoping that their first year as title sponsor of the Open de France can produce a similar finish to that of last year’s event when Remesy recorded a second consecutive victory at Le Golf National on the outskirts of Paris following a thrilling play-off with his countryman Jean Van de Velde after the two Frenchmen had produced a titanic final round battle for the trophy.
In 2004, Remesy ended a 35 year wait for a home victory in the Open de France. The last Frenchman to win his home country’s National Open before the 41 year old Remesy had been Jean Garaialde in 1969.
Whatever the nationality of the winner of the 2006 Open de France Alstom, he will join a list of past champions which, in the past 99 years, reads like a Who’s Who of golf through the ages.
Among the past winners are 18 Major Champions, namely, Massy (winner of the Open de France in 1906, 1907 and 1925), J. H. Taylor (1908 and 1909), James Braid (1910), George Duncan (1913), Walter Hagen (1920), Sir Henry Cotton (1946 and 1947), Roberto de Vicenzo (1950), Bobby Locke (1952 and 1953), Byron Nelson (1955), Kal Nagle ((1961), David Graham (1970), Seve Ballesteros (1977, 1982, 1985 and 1986), Greg Norman (1980), Sandy Lyle (1981), Nick Faldo (1983, 1988 and 1989), B Langer (1984), Retief Goosen (1997) and José Maria Olazábal (2001).
Alstom has supplied more than 25% of the world's installed power generation capacity and has an 18% market share in rail transportation worldwide. Alstom’s engineers built the fastest train and the highest capacity automated metro in the world as well as building the world’s largest luxury cruise liner, the Queen Mary 2.
