Ahead of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush in 2019, the R&A ended the sale of walk-in tickets. It used to be one of the joys of the Open that anyone could see how the tournament was poised, maybe take into account the weather forecast, and decide ‘You know what; I think I’ll go to the Open today.’ You simply paid at the gate. It was something you could never, for example, do for a Wimbledon singles final.
I get the point. It was explained this made it easier to organise the operational logistics, including being able to plan better for spectator safety. Less public emphasis was put on the fact that having all tickets bought in advance and online did rather help when it came to data harvesting, but there you go. At Portrush last year, the attendance of 278,000 for the week was the highest-ever for a non-St Andrews Open. At Royal Birkdale last month, that figure went up to 306,000, the highest turnout for any Open ever.
The R&A has emphasized that it wants to take the Open to venues where it can best maximize revenue, of which tickets sales are a substantial part. (Its concerns about Turnberry perhaps not being up to the job in this respect are among its reservations about taking the championship back to Donald Trump’s Ayrshire links for the first time since 2009.) Given that the Open is the R&A’s vehicle for raising money, and it uses that to fund hundreds of grassroots projects around the world, this is completely understandable and laudable. But there are consequences.
On one day at Birkdale I queued for 40 minutes to get access to the course. Fortunately the weather was fine but even though airport-style security has been in place at entry points since 2017, I had never previously known anything like this. Once on the premises, a writer in Global Golf Post noted that the extraordinarily enormous hospitality unit behind the 15th green was “a little too Phoenix and less Open” in terms of the drink-related crowd noise it created. It looked not unlike a huge booze-cruise.
For those unable to enjoy the charms of high-end hospitality, the go-to solution is usually the Open Arms, of which there were a few. But not enough. From any time after 12.30, the wait for a beer would typically be at least half-an-hour. Less than 30 miles south for the 2023 Open at Hoylake, that would seldom reach ten minutes. (I know, the weather was largely miserable for the last three days then, but it’s a moot point whether that should make the desire for a drink be sharper or milder.) I do realise that the main point of going to the Open is to watch the golf, and one would be able to do more of that if one could enjoy a lunch break in rather swifter order – and getting a sandwich, pizza, fish & chips or whatever was no speedy affair either.
The record previous Open attendance was 290,000, set at St Andrews in 2022. The Open is back at the Old Course again next July. Whereas Birkdale has terrific natural viewing mounds, St Andrews is largely flat and has 14 holes played with shared fairways…and, of course, the main point of going to the Open is to watch the golf.
You can follow Robert Green on Twitter @robrtgreen and enjoy his other blog f-factors.com as well as his golf archive on robertgreen-golf.com
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Robert Green
Robert Green is a former editor of Golf World and Golf International magazines and the author of four books on golf, including Seve: Golf’s Flawed Genius. He has played golf on more than 450 courses around the world, occasionally acceptably.