It will be fair to say that Theresa May won’t be on the R&A’s list of potential honorary female members. Bloomin’ Brexit eh?

“In hindsight, would I be wanting to do Portrush in the year that we would be potentially leaving the European Union without a deal?,” pondered Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, as he mulled over the Open Championship’s first visit to Northern Ireland since 1951 this summer. “No,” came the answer to his own question.

Everywhere you turn these days, you’ll hear the phrase “well, it’s down to uncertainty over Brexit”, whether it concerns big businesses moving their headquarters to the far east or Bessie forgetting to get her Alec his favourite Fray Bentos pie at the mini-market.

For Slumbers, the Open Championship’s venture over the Irish Sea to Royal Portrush is causing the kind of concerned head-scratching you’d get when Stan Laurel tried to cross a particularly busy A-road.

FLASHBACK: Royal Portrush back on Open rota

Backstopping remains an issue as far as the spirit of playing golf is concerned. The Irish backstop, meanwhile, is something Slumbers didn’t count on when Portrush was welcomed back on to the Open rota in 2015, a year before the referendum which provoked this appalling political fankle.

“Like every business, and I think about the Open as such, the lack of certainty about the rules we are operating under post-March 29th has caused us significant concern,” said Slumbers at his annual blether with the golf writers in St Andrews yesterday.

“We as a management team have spent a lot of time looking at contingencies and what we need to do. The future of the border is the No 1 concern.

“We have over 2000 containers to get across the Irish Sea and we start building on April 2. So we have a lot of material to move over there and we are determined to put on the best Open as we possibly can.

“If you know the rules you’re playing by then you can play, you optimise what you’ve got. The problem is we don’t know whether to reschedule to bring all our containers in through Dublin, whether to move them through Belfast or whether to ship them out of the UK now.

“These are all questions that we need to work through but there are other aspects that make Brexit potentially very complex. It doesn’t threaten the staging, we will make it happen. It’s just more complex than we anticipated.”

It’s been a busy old start to the year for those involved in this Royal & Ancient game. The tweaks and titivations to the Rules of Golf that were introduced on January 1 are bedding in but that process doesn’t come without its hiccups, hassles, controversies and contentions.

READ MORE: Royal Liverpool to host 2022 Open

The rule on caddies lining up players had to be revised and clarified after a couple of high profile incidents on the tours on both sides of the Atlantic while changing the method of taking a drop, from shoulder height to knee height, has already caught out Rickie Fowler, who was penalised in Mexico at the weekend. Old habits die hard.

“There have been some unfortunate situations, and if I was honest, it hasn’t gone as smoothly as I would have liked,” added Slumbers. “But I’m a realist around this. We’ve made the biggest change in a generation to the rules of golf. Overall I feel we have done the right thing for the game. We are going through change and change is not easy,

“As professionals we all have to know the rules and change happens in golf and in everything else. I think sadly, it’s probably true throughout the game that players don’t know the rule book as well as they should.

“It’s part of being proficient at your job and your sport that you do know the rules. But you can fall foul as I did on Saturday. I didn’t put my handicap on the card and was disqualified. I won’t do that again.”

On the old chestnut of slow play, Slumbers said: “What I care about is that the game is thriving 50 years from now. We have to get more people playing and what is clear is that the slow pace of golf doesn’t help.

“Ultimately, it’s up to all the players on tour to take responsibility to play quicker. I think it’s good that high profile players are talking about it (slow play). There’s nothing like peer pressure.”

Amid the hot topics of the day, Slumbers announced that the 2022 Open Championship will be heading back to Royal Liverpool. Brexit might be sorted by then ...