The dust has settled with world number one Scottie Scheffler winning this year’s Open at Royal Portrush in dominant fashion. Next year’s competition at Royal Birkdale will be followed in 2027 by a return to St Andrews in Scotland, and thereafter it’s a matter of conjecture as to who will host the following instalment of the world’s oldest golf tournament.
The new chief executive of the R&A, Mark Darbon, stoked a bit of speculation last week during a press conference in Northern Ireland when he spoke of “a really good discussion” earlier this year about the possibility of The Open returning to the US President’s crown golfing jewel in Turnberry. Amid rumours of pressure on the UK Government to help make this happen, Mr Darbon said the decision is firmly with the R&A and there remain "big logistical challenges" at Turnberry, which last hosted The Open in 2009.
Donald Trump is due to visit his Scottish golf courses, including those at Trump International in Aberdeenshire, later this week and is expected to receive a frosty reception from protestors. This will not deter him from pushing the case for Turnberry, while officials here will seize the opportunity to parlay with the President on matters such as trade tariffs and the offshore oil industry.
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The punters who piled into Rory McIlroy overnight on Saturday to overhaul Scheffler's four-shot lead following the Irishman's spirited performance in the third round took a calculated gamble and lost. Betting on the eventual return of The Open to Turnberry is an equally tricky proposition.
“You see the scale of their setup here [at Royal Portrush] and we’ve got some work to do on the road, rail and accommodation infrastructure around Turnberry," Mr Darbon told reporters last week. “We’ve explicitly not taken it out of our pool of venues but we’d need to address those logistical challenges should we return.”
Asked directly if the resort's ownership will impact the decision on Turnberry, Mr Darbon said this is a "somewhat hypothetical question" unless these other issues are addressed.
“I met a couple of months ago with Eric Trump and some of the leadership from the Trump golf organisation and from Turnberry," he added. "We had a really good discussion.
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“I think they understand clearly where we’re coming from. We talked through some of the challenges that we have so we’ve got a good dialogue with them.”
While a bit short of a resounding endorsement this is a softening in the R&A's stance under previous chief executive Martin Slumbers, who suggested on numerous occasions that the famed Ailsa course would not host The Open while under the ownership of Donald Trump.
Speaking to the Golf Channel the month before retiring from the R&A in December 2024, Mr Slumbers said: “We will not be taking any events there until we are comfortable that the whole dialogue will be about golf.
“That situation is something we’re still not comfortable with at the moment, but that could evolve in the coming years.”
Looking ahead to later this week, my colleague Brian Taylor put forward his views a few days ago as to whether the UK Prime Minister or Scotland's First Minister should be more concerned about meeting with President Trump on his forthcoming trip. Both are scheduled to do so.
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Brian's conclusion? Well, both meetings offer opportunities: "A chance to convince this most mercurial leader that he should change tack on tariffs, that global trade is in jeopardy. Or, at least, a chance to try."
Yet both Keir Starmer and John Swinney can expect criticism for engaging with Mr Trump.
I'll leave the political optics for others to wrangle with but I can't help imagining the moment when First Minister Swinney broaches the subject of Scotch whisky exports to the US, which are being disrupted by higher tariffs. I'd lay a wager that "The Open" and "Turnberry" are among the first 20 words in President Trump's response.
The final tally has yet to be verified, but based on advance ticket sales the R&A estimated back in April crowds totalling 278,000 throughout last week's competition on the Dunluce links at Royal Portrush.
When confirmed – let's be realistic, it will be confirmed – this will be the second-best attended Open in history after some 290,000 people descended on St Andrews in 2022 for its 150th anniversary. More than 258,000 fans attended last year's tournament at Royal Troon, making it third on the all-time list.
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Size matters in the modern model of this historic competition, and numbers such as those above dwarf the roughly 123,000 spectators who made the trip to Turnberry when the Ayrshire resort last hosted The Open.
With the exception of 2020 and 2021 – when the event was cancelled and the following year restricted by Covid containment measures – Turnberry has by far the lowest attendance record of the last 17 years. The next closest is Muirfield in 2013 (142,000), another hopeful hampered by logistics which is vying for a slot after being reinstated to The Open rota in 2017.
Put another way, crowd numbers in all of the last four years since the pandemic have comfortably more than doubled the turnout at Turnberry in 2009.
“That’s really important for us because not only do we want to showcase this wonderful championship to as many people as possible, but it’s important for us in terms of our commercial model because everything that we generate from The Open, we then reinvest back into the game all around the world," Mr Darbon said earlier this year.
In this he clearly agrees with his predecessor Mr Slumbers, who was fond of saying that "big-time sport needs a big-time crowd". Questions of capacity appear to have overtaken politics in the quest to return The Open to Turnberry.
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