The Open Golf Championship at Royal Troon is now at its halfway stage, with some enthralling play having been on show over the last two days.

Today, one of our readers laments the commercialism which he argues has put the event out the reach of ordinary folk.

DH Telford of Fairlie writes:

"Well, I hope those who now have control of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews are proud of themselves; for handing over control of one of the greatest, egalitarian, sporting occasions on Earth to the touts, hospitality swingers and sundry money-grubbing charlatans. Ordinary people no longer able to pay at the gate to experience the wonderful spectacle of an Open Golf Championship. Troon town centre no longer full with the electric atmosphere of eager local punters, ordinary men women and children who love golf, spilling out of train after train to walk to Old Troon golf course. It’s now all about that other course: 'money of course'.

The first name on the Claret Jug is that of Young Tom Morris, who had won the Open on four successive occasions, hence winning the original Championship Belt outright after three. Young Tom tragically died at the age of 24, just four months after the death of his wife and newborn child in childbirth. Someone said to his father that he thought his son had died of a broken heart. Old Tom is reputed to have disagreed, saying: 'If you could die of a broken heart, then I wouldn’t be here either.'

Perhaps we all now know something of the death of golf as the ordinary man’s playing sport in Scotland."