Yours truly is going to be 49 later this week. You could say I’m pushing 50 although, judging by the strained rictus displayed in that byline picture over there, it looks more like I’m dragging it.
The day before I take another step closer to my half century, I’ll be clattering and battering away with my learned colleagues in the Genesis Scottish Open media outing at The Renaissance. Such taxing golfing exertion will, no doubt, accelerate the ageing process.
The reason for this weary pessimism is that I’ve not played a heck of a lot this year. It’s tricky, therefore, to gauge what kind of state my game will be in and, until I muddle through the first couple of holes, I’ll not know whether the round will be a complete farce or just a mere fiasco.
To help us negotiate the links, the good folk at The Renaissance provide each group with a forecaddie.
Given I’ll likely plonk my ball nowhere near the strategic position he takes up down the fairway, we’ll probably end up communicating with each other from afar with some kind of elaborate maritime flag semaphore.
Having that extra pair of eyes watching affairs unravel is always handy, of course.
I don’t know about you but when I look up, causing an awful shot, I’ll always look down again in muttering, cursing disgust at the exact moment I should actually be looking up and watching my ball if I ever want to see the ruddy thing again.
Our forecaddie will be kept busy. It’s going to be busy, meanwhile, over the water at Royal Portrush when the Open returns to Northern Ireland in July.
Last week, the R&A announced that the total attendance for the 153rd championship will be a whopping 278,000, some 40,000 more than the last time it was held at Portrush in 2019 and the second highest in Open history behind the 290,000 souls who shoehorned themselves into St Andrews in 2022.
The queue for a pint at the town’s well-kent Harbour Bar will probably stretch back to the Stena Line ferry terminal in Belfast.
With Rory McIlroy returning home as Masters champion and a career grand slam winner – and who knows what else he’s plonked on to his mantelpiece come July – the stampede through the gates will be like something you’d see on a nature documentary about the great migration of the Wildebeest.
In the eyes of the R&A, big is, indeed, beautiful. Martin Slumbers, the former chief executive of the St Andrews-based governing body, was always a fan of the phrase, “big-time sport needs a big-time crowd.”
Now, I appreciate that vast ticket sales, and the revenue it all generates, does wonders for the R&A’s terrific golf-related initiatives around the world but I always thought the relentless focus on said sales in recent years was a trifle tawdry.
Look at Augusta and the spectator experience at the Masters? Less is more.
A hierarchy has since developed in terms of Open venues as the organisers look more favourably at hosts that can easily accommodate the 200,000-plus mark. This emphasis on how many folk they can cram in gently dunts certain esteemed courses into the margins. That's a pity for some truly outstanding venues.
The fact the Open is back at Portrush for a second time in just six years – it had been 68 years since the previous visit there – speaks volumes for the R&A’s mantra of size matters.
Muirfield, widely regarded as the finest, purest links in the world and a host of 16 Opens, hasn’t staged the championship since 2013.
In that time, of course, there was the small matter of a stooshie surrounding the Honourable Company’s now defunct all-male membership policy. We all know, meanwhile, about the various issues with Turnberry.
Putting all the off-course stuff to one side – and it’s not easy to put Trump to one side for a start - it would still be a mighty shame if the iconic majesty of the Ailsa Course never held another Open.
Royal Lytham, on the other hand, hasn’t hosted an Open since Ernie Els pounced on Adam Scott’s excruciating collapse to pinch the Claret Jug in 2012.
Encased by the railway line and residential housing, the treasured Lancashire venue is now viewed as being a bit tight for the all-singing, all-dancing Open circus.
The magnificence of the links, the cherished history and the robust nature of the golfing test, though, should take precedence over logistical challenges with infrastructure or reduced attendances. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking in this highly commercial age?
Next year marks the 100th anniversary of the great Bobby Jones’s first Open win in the first Open to be held at Lytham in 1926. Golf loves such commemorative nods to a storied past.
But next season’s Open is going to that other northwest powerhouse of Royal Birkdale. Lytham will, at least, host the Women’s Open in 2026. Your correspondent will be a wizened auld you-know-what by the time the Open returns there, if it ever does.
In the public ticket ballot for this year’s showpiece, all the briefs were just about sold out in the time it took you to gasp the word ‘ballot’. Big-time crowds, indeed.
Portrush, then, will pack them in. It will pack the coffers too. But a big part of an Open is showcasing the very best links courses these isles offer, not just the ones that make the most money.
