Sadly it?s their club, their rules

For the record, I don?t agree with it at all and sadly many golf clubs are stuck in the dark ages.

But - the open is a funny beast for members of a club that hosts the event. Prep starts a year+ before for all the planning, and infrastructure work required. Cabling, IT stuff takes ages to get sorted. Then there?s all the stands that need to go up, lorries everywhere, building sites to hold all the parts. Best place to store it is on a big open space, the driving range is a good candidate so a practice area is lost for a while.

And the R+A take over the course, there?s areas that are ground under repair for ages before the event, the landing areas on the fairways where the pro?s hit to. There may be extra tees built as they hit it so far as the kit and the balls have outgrown the courses. And the greens need to be perfect so there?s be weeks of prep to get them to the correct speed with work being done in the summer as opposed to the start of the season.

And what to clubs get out of it? Aside from the prestige and the ability to charge tourists ?220 for a round I don?t think it?s that profitable for the golf club. The R+A take the gate money, the merchandising all is controlled by them too. You could argue that these courses could charge a huge fee even if they are off the open rota. The amount paid by the R+A is under NDA and not known, I understood it is much less than I would ever have guessed.

So all in all it?s a bit of pain for the club members so I?m not surprised that (IMO) they are probably not fussed about losing it.

The main loss sadly is to the local economy which would have a huge tourist boost for a couple of weeks.

Posted By: KentonCanary, May 19, 17:04:01