One afternoon last week, around the 17th green at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, the rain was pattering on the parasols and the air was cold enough for an English summer. A veil of fog clouded the landscape. Yet a few long tee shots across the estuary were close enough to peek at the Welsh coast.
The British Open, due to end on Sunday, may never come close to Wales.
First held while Queen Victoria was on the throne, the Open is a national ceremony that has been held only in limited parts of the country, and unlike England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is not held in Wales. With venues through 2026 already selected, Wales is still left out and the drought will last at least as long as the first 154 openings. By then, Northern Ireland, which hadn’t hosted a Modern Open until 2019, will have a new Open.
The R&A, organizers of the Open Championship, said Wales were left out because of infrastructure and capacity issues. It’s no small matter, as the Games require the temporary launch of a heavily guarded, hospitality-filled, championship-level coastal enclave that draws tens of thousands of people a day. But the R&A’s stance has long raised questions about whether one of the country’s flagship sporting events is a good reflection of Britain.
“Not all parts of the UK are covered by the Open and excluding all citizens from the Open is not true to the idea that golf is open to everyone,” said Welsh MP Ken Skate, who lobbied the R&A to host the Open in Wales when he was Minister of Economy.
“It’s a little frustrating,” he politely admitted, standing behind the first green at Royal Liverpool on Friday.
Jockeying for hosting rights is nothing new to the sport, and men’s golf is a particularly valuable target for the few venues with courses challenging enough to test the world’s best. Three of the four major tournaments are held at different venues each year. (With the exception of Masters tournaments, which are always held at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.)
The R&A’s list of open eligible courses is effectively just nine, from the Scottish facilities on the North Sea to Royal St George’s in the South East of England. After this weekend at Royal Liverpool in the North West of England, next year will return to Royal Troon in Scotland, followed by Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland and Royal Birkdale in England.
For all intents and purposes, the R&A has always faced a predicament as to how far they can fit the Open to conventional standards. Several past venues are no longer participating, including the original open course, Prestwick, which was ultimately judged too small for a packed crowd. More recently, the relationship between former President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Turnberry has put the R&A at a distance.
But Wales had no turn at all. In fact, one of the biggest problems for Wales is that the R&A has canceled openings at more courses than domestic candidates. Only Royal Porcourt is considered a possibility, and cheerleaders acknowledge its shortcomings.
Still, exclusion hurts.
“We have an inferiority complex,” said golf writer John Hopkins, who has been a member of the Royal Portcall since the late 1990s, adding with a smile that Welsh are primarily known for their “ability to play rugby and sing”.
But hosting the British Open “will prove that we outweigh ourselves in golf,” he said.
Perhaps due to historical inertia or the innate tendency of the St Andrews-based R&A to favor England and Scotland, some believe that forces beyond the running of the tournament are working to keep the Open Championship elsewhere. In 2019, The Telegraph urged The R&A says it “eliminates politics” and “disregards concerns about ‘infrastructure’ and the strength of ties as they are mere smokescreens.”
There is little doubt that the R&A is doing the Royal Portcall a favor for other important events, and some see this approach as a consolation prize. The Senior Open will be decided there next weekend, while the Women’s Open is set to debut at Royal Portcall in 2025. There are concerns about whether the Royal Porcourt is long enough for today’s strong men’s players, but the course itself is generally seen as suitable for the Open, in part because it is particularly vulnerable to the stormy weather that characterizes the tournament, as we saw during the two Senior Opens that Bernhard Langer won there.
“One was completely dry. The ball was flying 100 yards down the fairway,” Langer, a two-time Masters tournament winner, said in an interview. “And one of them was wet and windy and could not have been more miserable. That’s links golf.”
The R&A’s chief executive, Martin Slumbers, said Wednesday that the course is “genuinely world-class”.
“But we need a lot of land,” he quickly added. “We need a lot of infrastructure. A championship of this size needs a lot of equipment.
Established in 1891, the Royal Porthcall has a small footprint with relatively limited space for the gates, spectator stands, premium seating, scoring tents and all other temporary facilities required for a major. This year’s British Open is expected to draw 260,000 spectators, second only to the 290,000 fans who filled the Old Course at St Andrews last year. The last time attendance at the British Open fell below 150,000 was at Muirfield 10 years ago.
In 2017, when Langer last competed in the Senior Open at Royal Portcall, the event drew about 32,000 people despite bad weather.
The course is about a 45-minute drive from the Welsh capital Cardiff, but there are few restaurants, hotels or transport around the club, making the Open one of the smoothest events in international sport. Hoylake’s many restaurants and rentals welcomed large crowds during the tournament at Royal Liverpool. Even more people often use rail services that run every 10 minutes to travel the short distance to Liverpool, a city of about half a million people.
Mr Langer had no doubts that Royal Portcaul could prove to be a suitable host for the Open Championship from a golfing point of view, but seemed much more reluctant to say that Royal Portcaul could handle the other challenges of the 31-played tournament.
“Building new roads, highways, 100 hotels, tent villages and space for 50,000 spectators is difficult,” he said.
Welsh leaders have indicated their intention to pursue public investment in exchange for an open event at Royal Portcall, with some Royal Portcall members looking to purchase nearby farmland that could be much more likely to be held open if vacated. But their years of effort have yet to yield breakthroughs that could overcome the R&A’s concerns.
But the rise of Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, whether ultimately misplaced or not, gave Welsh officials something of a strategy, or at least some confidence.
Skates predicted that the R&A could bend within a decade.
Then he wandered off to find his brother Welsh towering in the distance.
