The Open will return to Royal Birkdale later this month, bringing with it tens of thousands of spectators and an army of unpaid helpers as members of the Open Host Team.
The R&A does not publish a headcount, but golf majors typically use several thousand volunteers. The USGA, for example, brought in more than 3,000 to the US Open at Shinnecock Hills in June.
If The Open at Birkdale draws roughly 2,500 volunteers, each working four six‑hour shifts over the July 12-19 window, that implies roughly 60,000 hours of labour. Valued at £12–£15 an hour, that is between £720,000 and £900,000 of work delivered for free at a single event.
If the richest events in golf still lean heavily on goodwill, so too do those further down the ladder. This year's Herald Scottish Golf Survey, first published at the beginning of June, sketches an industry that has become more sophisticated in how it prices and markets itself – yet broadly remains founded on over‑stretched volunteer committees to handle governance, finance and strategy.
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A substantial number of clubs are struggling to persuade members to stand for office just as the workload, risk and scrutiny attached to those roles are rising. Resignation rates have climbed back above 6%, and closer to 10% at smaller clubs, shrinking the pool of potential volunteers.
Economically, the game is holding together at club level – for now. Membership subscriptions in Scotland cluster around £650–£800, a sign that boards remain wary of pushing local golfers too far.
Visitor pricing tells a different story. The average green fee has climbed above £80, but the median sits at £45, a gap created by a small group of high‑ticket destinations charging several hundred pounds a round. That divergence is the statistical fingerprint of a three‑tier market: a handful of price‑setting “cathedrals”, a broad middle of everyday members’ clubs, and a lower tier of vulnerable community courses.
Clubs have responded to rising energy, labour, maintenance and insurance costs by leaning harder on visitors. Subscriptions are rising at less than half the rate of green fees, and many boards are reluctant to push much beyond the psychological £1,000 barrier for fear of a backlash.
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Instead, they turn to visitors as the pressure valve, asking them to bear more of the inflationary burden through higher prices, dynamic tariffs and peak‑time surcharges, while members are largely shielded. On paper this makes sense, but in practice it pushes the system towards a model where those who pass through once increasingly pay for the facilities relied upon by those who are there all year.
Across that whole spectrum, volunteer labour is the hidden thread. Kevin Fish of Contemporary Club Leadership describes many clubs as short on long-term planning while lacking the number or quality of volunteer governors required, all while cost‑of‑living pressures outpace subscription increases.
Where boards dodge difficult decisions on pricing or capital investment, they risk becoming what Mr Fish calls “VOLUNTEER” clubs – viable only through ongoing labour from non‑professional traditionalists – even as those traditionalists become harder to find. The elite tier can treat volunteers as a complement; it is the mid‑tier and community venues, the ones using visitor income to hold down subs and preserve local access, that still run on unpaid labour and year‑to‑year budgeting.
The Open at Royal Birkdale shows what that labour is worth when you put a price on it. The question is whether Scottish clubs that describe their financial situation as stable would be anywhere near so confident with the cost of volunteer hours weighing on the expenditure column. The R&A and the USGA could arguably take the hit; most members' clubs could not.
