Royal Troon prepares for huge Open attendance hike

Golf’s oldest and most cherished major is big business. And it’s getting bigger. The last time The Open was at Troon in 2016, a total of 173,000 spectators watched golfing affairs unravel.

This July, when the championship returns to the Ayrshire coast, a whopping 250,000 will file through the gates in the kind of mass stampede you’d get with a migration of Wildebeest.

The 152nd staging of The Open will have the third highest attendance in history, after the 290,000 that were shoehorned into St Andrews for the 150th bonanza in 2022 and the 260,000 that descended on Hoylake last year.

“It’s a clear sign of the size of The Open, said The R&A’s director of championship operations, Rhodri Price, who noted that some 22,500 will be under-25 while 13,000 will be part of the Kids Go Free initiative. “That’s testament to what The Open does for youngsters,” he added.

With the ticket ballot sold out, the combative LIV Golf chief executive, Greg Norman, may have to sneak in from the beach.

In the tense, uneasy truce that men’s professional golf finds itself in, Norman grabbed a chunk of the limelight at the Masters after apparently buying a ticket on the secondary market.

The 69-year-old Australian, who won two Claret Jugs and lost in a play-off at Troon in 1989, was not invited by The R&A to compete in the Celebration of Champions or attend the Champions’ Dinner at St Andrews in 2022 after the LIV rebellion had swung into action just a few weeks earlier.

“I don’t think there’s a ‘G Norman’ (on the list) and I think someone would have let me know if there was,” chuckled The R&A’s director of corporate communications, Mike Woodcock, when asked if the Great White Shark’s name had been plucked out of that ticket tombola.

“Obviously there are tickets still available on the resale platform or hospitality. He’s very welcome to look there.”

With the vast Open infrastructure being clattered and rattled up and transforming the Royal Troon surrounds into an officially-branded town of its own, the stage continues to be set.

The robust links will play to a total yardage of 7,385 yards, up by 195 yards on the 2016 championship. At a formidable 623-yards, the par-five sixth will be the longest hole in Open history.

This wheezing correspondent just about required fistfuls of Kendal Mint Cake and a sherpa to complete the great hike as we gasped and wheezed through a series of mighty blows in the media outing yesterday.

Two holes later, players will square up to the shortest hole in the championship’s history at the celebrated Postage Stamp.

The par-3 eighth, the scene of German amateur Hermann Tissies’ grisly 15 in the 1950 Open, measures just 123 yards on the scorecard but organisers can knock that down to a mere 99 yards with a front pin if they fancy.

Unsurprisingly, the Postage Stamp will be a significant feature of The Open presentation. TV cameras will be dug into all five bunkers that surround the tiny green to capture all manner of sandy escapades while a wraparound grandstand with 1500 seats will be a much sought after vantage point.

The Claret Jug has been plonked on Brian Harman’s mantelpiece in Georgia for the last year.  The American lefty has enjoyed having it.

“It holds a bottle of wine to perfection,” he said on a conference call as he mulled over the various libations that have been slurped from it. “Lots of wine, lots of Guinness, maybe even a little bit of Kentucky's finest bourbon in there.”

Harman, a calm, composed, clinical winner at Hoylake last July, has certainly savoured the giddy highs that come with Open success. His first taste of links golf at nearby Prestwick, though, was a sobering experience.

“I hated links golf, it ate me to pieces,” he winced as he reflected on his appearance in the 2007 Palmer Cup at the birthplace of The Open. “I kept trying to hit lob wedge around the greens. I got killed and lost all my matches.”

Here in 2024, Harman will return to this parish as an Open champion. It’s a funny old game.