The Durham Open was a golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

 tournament on the PGA Tour

PGA Tour

The PGA Tour is the organizer of the main men's professional golf tours in the United States and North America...

 that was played three times from 1944 to 1945. The tournament was held at the Hope Valley Country Club in Durham, North Carolina

Durham, North Carolina

Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...

. Each tournament had a purse of $5,000 with a winner's share of $1,000 (cash value of war bonds

Series E bond

Series E U.S. Savings Bonds were marketed by the United States government as war bonds from 1941 to 1980. When Americans refer to war bonds, they are usually referring to Series E bonds. Those issued from 1941 to November 1965 accrued interest for 40 years; those issued from December 1965 to June...

).

In 1944, Craig Wood

Craig Wood (golfer)

Craig Ralph Wood was an American professional golfer in the 1930s and 1940s, the winner of 21 PGA Tour titles including two major championships and a member of three Ryder Cup teams ....

 won the Durham Open for his last PGA Tour victory. In April 1945, Byron Nelson

Byron Nelson

John Byron Nelson, Jr. was an American PGA Tour golfer between 1935 and 1946.Nelson and two other well known golfers of the time, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, were born within seven months of each other in 1912...

 won the Durham Open for his 4th of 11 consecutive victories. Later in the year, amateur Frank Stranahan

Frank Stranahan

Frank Richard Stranahan was a successful amateur golf champion. Stranahan was also the number one power lifter in his weight class from 1945 to 1954 and he became known on the golf course and off as the "Toledo strongman" long before the modern game of golf and fitness...

 won by a stroke over Ed Oliver.

Winners

Date	Winner	Score	Ref
Nov 11, 1945	Frank Stranahan Frank Stranahan Frank Richard Stranahan was a successful amateur golf champion. Stranahan was also the number one power lifter in his weight class from 1945 to 1954 and he became known on the golf course and off as the "Toledo strongman" long before the modern game of golf and fitness...  (amateur)	277 (-3)
Apr 1, 1945	Byron Nelson Byron Nelson John Byron Nelson, Jr. was an American PGA Tour golfer between 1935 and 1946.Nelson and two other well known golfers of the time, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, were born within seven months of each other in 1912...	276 (-4)
Mar 26, 1944	Craig Wood Craig Wood (golfer) Craig Ralph Wood was an American professional golfer in the 1930s and 1940s, the winner of 21 PGA Tour titles including two major championships and a member of three Ryder Cup teams ....	271 (-12)