The Open at Portrush will attract the second-biggest crowd in the championship’s history with 237,750 attending, and the R&A are “respectful guests” of them and the Northern Irish town, said chief executive Martin Slumbers.
Because of land and access restraints – and the belief that all of Ireland might come if the Open tradition of paying-at-the-gate continued – this week is all-ticket and for the first time the R&A know exactly who is coming. And only the Millennium Open of 2000 at St Andrews, when 239,000 attended in blazing sunshine, has attracted more spectators.
The rain that fell steadily and sometimes strongly yesterday is also forecast for the rest of the week, which won’t stop the golf-mad Irish but may put a dampener on the other event in the town this weekend, a display of loyalist marching bands on Saturday evening many feel doesn’t sit well alongside the championship.
For some, even many Northern Irish, the Saturday event is a reminder of past attitudes they’d rather wasn’t at the forefront when international attention is focused so acutely on this small seaside town. But Slumbers was at pains not to rock the boat any further or suggest any R&A disquiet at the “competing” event.
“We are very conscious that The Open comes to town only once every 10 or so years,” he said. “We are very conscious that we are guests here, every year at the place we go to.
“We want to be part of the community, we want to spend money in the community and help with legacy funds. But we will be gone in a couple of weeks.
“Every year, certainly since I’ve been here, there’s always things going on around the golf. The community carries on.
“Our job is to put on the Open Championship and to respect the fact that we are guests.”
Nevertheless, the Open provides around £120 million of economic impact into the economy of the host nation.
Courses are changed, roads are built, railway stations are upgraded and traffic systems imposed. The R&A are not without clout because of all this, but they seem not to have used it on this occasion.
There’s no question Northern Ireland as an entire community from senior politicians down to volunteer marshals has embraced the return of the championship, and this very special championship is a historic event.
“In previous years I’ve said the big-time sport needs big-time crowds and I think this clearly shows that The Open is going from strength to strength,” said Slumbers. “It’s very much a global celebration of sport at the very highest level and no longer simply a British championship.
“That’s very important for us because The Open is where we generate the income to be able to support the game and invest our commitment of two hundred million pounds into the sport over the next decade.”
Slumbers is “hugely positive” about golf, but spent much of his time in the annual pre-Open press conference focused on women’s participation.
The R&A will assume sole responsibility for the Women’s British Open from next year, having raised prizemoney by 40 per cent for this year’s event in two weeks at Woburn.
“We’re as ambitious for the Women’s British Open as we are for this Open,” he said when asked if he envisaged equality in the prizefunds between the men’s and women’s championships. “We’re passionate about growing the women’s game.
“The future of our game, the amateur game, is in getting more families to play golf. That is the real opportunity that we have. When you look at countries where the game is growing it is a much more family-orientated sport.
“To be able to keep raising the prize money of the Women’s Open, we need to do it as a sustainable business model. It needs to be a long-term business model.
“And that is what we are spending a long time doing, how do we build a better model to have a more financially successful Women’s British Open that will flow then down into the prize money.
“Where that ends up, I don’t know. But my ambition is to keep growing the overall performance of it and keep enhancing the status of the event.”
In the meantime, there are no plans to expand the Open beyond its current “pool” of 10 courses. Royal Portrush, Hoylake and Carnoustie had been restored to that pool in the last 20 years and “are venues which are going to be used and played for The Open Championship for many years to come,” said Slumbers.
Turnberry, currently owned by US president Donald Trump, is on that pool of 10 but there still are no plans to return there at present, he added.
