British Open focus is on getting bigger. That leaves out some of the better links

By Canadian Press on April 22, 2025.

The objective of golf’s oldest championship is best illustrated by Tuesday’s announcement that 278,000 spectators will be at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland this summer for the 153rd staging of the British Open.

No other major has more history, the first one being played just three weeks before Abraham Lincoln was elected president.

No other major this year is more poised to celebrate Rory McIlroy, the native son, Masters champion and latest to capture the elusive Grand Slam.

No other major feels the need to announce its attendance.

The Royal & Ancient said the 278,000 spectators — 89,000 of them during the three days of practice — would be the second-largest crowd for the Open behind St. Andrews (290,000 in 2022), and some 40,000 more than the last time at Royal Portrush in 2019.

That the Open returned to Portrush in just five years — it had been 68 years since the previous visit to the Northern Ireland links — speaks to how much the R&A feels size matters.

“Big-time sport needs big-time crowds,” former R&A chief Martin Slumbers was fond of saying. His successor, Mark Darbon, feels the same.

“The Open is one of the world’s great sporting events and we will do everything we can to make this year’s championship at Royal Portrush an outstanding and memorable occasion for everyone involved from fans to players and the millions watching on TV and digital platforms worldwide,” Darbon said.

The best viewing likely will come from in front of a screen.

The bigger the crowds, the greater the excitement, even if the spectators on the ground have a hard time seeing much more than the back of someone’s head. It was like that at the Masters, where McIlroy played alongside Bryson DeChambeau. He cruised and then crashed and then came back and eventually beat Justin Rose in a playoff.

The theater was among the greatest ever. No attendance figures were announced (to be fair, Augusta National is not big on numbers, whether it’s attendance or the speed of greens, merchandise sales or digital traffic).

The U.S. Open and PGA Championship don’t announce attendance, and neither does the Ryder Cup (only the cost of the ticket, still less than U.S. players are getting paid ). Officials at both majors say privately they don’t like announcing sellouts. It’s a major. It’s supposed to sell out.

Even the WM Phoenix Open, the most raucous stop on the PGA Tour, stopped announcing attendance seven years ago. There was no need. It’s big, loud and packed. Everyone knows it. The last attendance figure for the Phoenix Open was 719,179 in 2018.

(The R&A is contemplating a British Open at Portmarnock in Ireland; no word if it will consider expanding outside the U.K. to Phoenix).

But it’s about being there. Big crowds made big loud, as a 20-year-old Se Ri Pak said with such great charm. There is something to be said about being part of history, like McIlroy at Augusta National or Phil Mickelson at Kiawah Island when he won the PGA Championship at age 50.

There also is the risk of leaning on too big, not only from the spectator’s experience but limitations on where to play.

Royal Portrush is getting the British Open six years apart — only St. Andrews, the home of golf, has had a quicker turnaround in the last 30 years.

Meanwhile, Muirfield waits.

Of the modern rotation, only St. Andrews has hosted the Open more times than the 16 editions at Muirfield, regarded as the purest of the links courses. Every Muirfield winner since World War II is in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

It was last held in 2013 and had just over 142,000 spectators who witnessed Mickelson win the third leg of the career Grand Slam.

Perhaps the R&A should take a page from the U.S. Open, which also likes big (Pinehurst No. 2, Winged Foot, Oakmont) but is not bothered to accept a smaller footprint because it wants the grandest stage for its championship.

The U.S. Open was at The Country Club outside Boston, with attendance estimated at 175,000 spectators (compare that with Oakmont in 2016 at about 230,000 fans). It will return to Merion in 2030 and Riviera in 2031. The crowds — and the revenue — won’t be as large. The courses are among the most revered in America.

Royal Lytham & St. Annes is another historic links that is running out of room to hold the spectators, along with the bells and whistles the R&A prefers. It last hosted the Open in 2012 and isn’t on the list without finding a way to create more room.

There’s also the curious case of Turnberry, revered as the most picturesque of all links courses, famous for the “Duel in the Sun” between Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus and owned by President Donald Trump since 2014 (five years after it last held the Open).

Slumbers had said for years there was no plan to return to Turnberry until the focus was squarely on golf.

Darbon took another route Tuesday when he mentioned a feasibility study before Turnberry is considered. He noted attendance in 2009 at Turnberry was only about 120,000, compared with some 280,000 fans at Portrush this summer.

“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,” Darbon said.

“So we’ve got a few challenges at Turnberry.”

The biggest challenge for Turnberry and Muirfield and Royal Lytham & St. Annes?

Size matters in the modern model of the Royal & Ancient.

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Doug Ferguson, The Associated Press