Open Championship host Royal Portrush is the rare golf major championship venue you can play

New York Times

4 hours ago

Have a look. Take in those dunes. The medieval ruins down along the coastline. The clubhouse walls jammed with mementos of the legends of Portrush. When you're done, don't bother hurrying out the door. A table of chatty members and a pint of Guinness are waiting for you upstairs.
Royal Portrush Golf Club might be the host of this week's Open Championship and a top 20 course in the world, but it can also be yours for the day. It will take some significant foresight and a few hundred quid in peak season, but yes, anyone can book a tee time at Royal Portrush, the final men's major championship venue of 2025.
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The Portrush philosophy is simple, and it echoes that of other golf clubs around the U.K. and Ireland. You don't need to pull any strings or solicit an invitation from an influential member. You just need to plan ahead, deploy your credit card and brace for seaside gusts.
'A visit at Royal Portrush is essentially being a member for the day,' says Gary McNeill, Royal Portrush's head professional for more than 25 years.
First-timers will wholeheartedly embrace the challenge of the links on holes such as the monstrous par-3 16th, fittingly named Calamity Corner. They'll direct an extended gaze toward the view of Whiterocks Beach, which can first be seen from the fifth hole. Expect the property to welcome you with open arms and set you off on the course to crush your dreams of a personal record round promptly. That's the whole point.
Now a three-time Open venue, Royal Portrush's prestige is not born from exclusivity.
Of the 2025 major championships — the four biggest tournaments in the men's game — three of the host clubs thrive on being only for the few. Augusta National Golf Club is famously private, but this year's PGA Championship and U.S. Open sites, Charlotte's Quail Hollow and Pittsburgh's Oakmont, respectively, are also private, members-only clubs. These venues embody a uniquely American fascination with closed doors.
Royal Portrush is not only open to visitors, but also its yearly membership dues are what the average American golfer could spend on public tee times in one summer, if not less.
There are exceptions in the U.S. — Ryder Cup host Bethpage Black is $80 on the weekends for New York residents, and 2021 U.S. Open host Torrey Pines offers a similar deal for San Diegans. Pebble Beach is a public course, but greens fees now approach $700. However, it is the most exclusive of America's private courses that dominate the rotation of hosts for elite stateside professional events.
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In places such as Scotland and Northern Ireland, the regions that saw the birth of the sport, the country club ethos is largely a foreign concept. The few members-only clubs, including Hogs Head and Loch Lomond, are exceptions to a norm.
'It's always nice for me when I play in pro-ams and I meet people who can't wait to tell me about the Ireland trip they've just been on,' says Leona Maguire, a native of Ireland's County Cavan and two-time LPGA Tour winner. 'Yes, a tee time is hard to get, but if you plan it with enough time, you will get to play those best courses, like Royal Portrush and Ballybunion and Royal County Down. Whereas I've never played Augusta, I'll probably never play Pine Valley. Unless I know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody.'
The foundation of golf culture overseas is the antithesis of what we have seen normalized in the U.S. Being part of a club is an important form of camaraderie and association, but in the U.K. and Ireland, there is a unique separation between club and course. The existence of a private club does not limit access to the playing ground for non-members. Actually, one sustains the other.
That's why paying visitors are almost universally welcomed. And people join their hometown club not to flex their socioeconomic status, but because it's natural: They love the game and they're not inhibited by barriers to play it.
So this week's championship at Royal Portrush begs the question: Where did we go wrong?
Golf first took root in the United States in the 1890s, and the emergence of the age-old game in the U.S. coincided with a cultural movement that shaped its place in American society. The sport was at the epicenter of the creation of the country club as a new American institution. At the turn of the century, Anglo-Saxon Americans felt a sense of anxiety.
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Immigration. Industrial expansion. New money. Perceived threats to the Victorian way of life emerged. The search for the preservation of tradition and local values was on.
As Richard J. Moss writes in his book 'Golf and the American Country Club,' private spaces to play British games, such as hunting, riding and golf, were seen as an attempt to 'recapture the old ways' in a period of rapid change. The exclusion of those who didn't fit the mold, or who didn't care to indulge, was enmeshed in the creation of such clubs. Golf was swept into those spaces.
'In this context, an ancient game from Scotland must have seemed an appropriate antidote to a confusing world,' Moss wrote.
So, country club culture in America took shape, and privacy and exclusivity were prioritized as the sport's popularity ebbed and flowed throughout the next century. Many scholars see golf's involvement in the country club movement as a tragedy, of sorts. A game that was supposed to uphold values of honesty and civility became entangled in an aristocratic world, to the game's detriment. To many, golf was to become a sport played behind a wall.
Municipal and public golf in the U.S. has brought the game to middle-class Americans. Programs such as First Tee make it accessible and affordable for young players around the country. Outside of the country club, though, there are limitations — overcrowding, lack of resources and rising greens fees among them. However, private courses are wide open and well-conditioned, thanks to small memberships paying massive yearly dues and initiation fees.
The recreational game was never meant to exist with such a stark divide.
'It's funny how old world golf is much less stuffy than new world golf,' says Tom Coyne, who walked the length of Ireland for his book 'A Course Called Ireland' and has since written sequels on Scotland and the United States. 'You would think it would be the other way around.'
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In its beginnings, the game of golf was played and designed for the working man. Perhaps the best example of those roots is in St. Andrews at the Old Course, the Home of Golf. Competitions called Medals are still played on Thursdays, when shopkeepers traditionally worked half days.
'Golf in the U.K. was very much a working man's sport,' says Neil Donaldson, a past captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. 'It was cheap, it was healthy, it was in the fresh air and with your friends. And then you came back, had a beer afterwards, and went home.'
With tourism and the post-COVID-19 golf boom, the landscape has evolved, of course. Tee times are harder to come by because the demand to play golf in that part of the world is exploding. However, for the most part, a core sentiment remains — egalitarian ideals uphold the game.
Being a member of a club in a place such as Scotland is nothing like being a member of a country club in America. There are no tennis courts or swimming pools. Courses are set within the natural terrain. Everyone walks and carries their bag. No one warms up. The pints are reserved for either before or after your round, never during. It's an all-day game: Even at 9 p.m., as long as there is daylight, you can walk up and play a few holes.
Corporate outings are nonexistent, but team golf is prevalent. There are ladies' and men's teams, with appointed captains, that compete against fellow clubs and universities. Competition is a part of the culture. At Royal Portrush, both members and non-members participate in a weekly competition called the Hat. As much as the club is a place to support your love of the game, it also serves as a home. The community gathers around sport.
'Even if it's not a match, if I'm playing with my friends at another club, I am representing my golf club. I am an ambassador for my golf club. We are terribly proud of that responsibility,' says Donaldson.
The cost of a yearly club membership, especially one at an Open rotation course, will shock the typical top-100 American country club member, who wouldn't bat an eye at the prospect of paying well into six figures for an initiation fee.
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Royal Portrush charges £1,800 ($2,400) per year for full membership, with an entry fee between £4,000 and £5,000. It's an extensive process to become a member, especially now that the Open has returned to the County Antrim links for a third time. The doors only open to new candidates every couple of years, and you have to have quite a few character references.
But at Portrush, the size of your bank account will never aid in your chance of acceptance. The committee will evaluate your respect for the game and your communal values, not your trust fund or social status. Gerry McAleese, a 66-year-old schoolteacher and past captain at Royal Portrush, joined the club as a junior member at age 11. He paid £7 for entry.
'When I meet some American visitors on the practice ground, and I say it costs £1,800, they say, 'Is that per month?' And I say no, it's for the year,' McAleese says.
At non-Open rota venues and lesser-known courses, many of which are just as prestigious from an architecture standpoint, it's not unusual for yearly membership fees to be closer to £750 ($1,000). It's a large annual sum, but compared to equivalent courses in the U.S., it's a steal.
'That's a huge amount of money to a lot of people, but at these clubs, when they put the price of coffee up by 30 pence, there's a riot,' Donaldson says.
The local caddies will oftentimes be active members themselves. At some courses, you can walk up to the secretary and join on the spot, as long as you have a handicap. Juniors play for free at many places. 'The juniors are seen as an important part of the club,' says Maguire. 'My parents are both schoolteachers, and I grew up playing with my younger brother and twin sister. We wouldn't have been able to afford golf if it had been the way it is in the U.S.'
In the U.K. and Ireland, locals with normal working salaries can more often than not afford a club membership. The system is designed to support that reality. Coyne recalls meeting the captain of the Ballybunion men's team on one of his first visits to Ireland. He was the Ballybunion postman.
'The size of one's wallet would make absolutely no difference whatsoever to any club that I can think of,' says Donaldson. 'It doesn't even matter if you're a particularly good golfer. But do you love golf? Do you have golf in your DNA?'
With a realization of the beauty of links golf and the popularization of destination travel comes a dilemma for many clubs. The Open rotation courses, Royal Portrush included, are subject to a supply and demand issue attributable to the rapid rise of participation in the sport, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
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At these top-tier links venues, greens fees for visitors are increasing by the year, and securing one of those tee times in the first place is difficult. It's not impossible — it never will be — but the trend is there. Members of clubs across the U.K. and Ireland are actively taking note.
'There's a huge pressure on getting a tee time,' Donaldson says. 'There are so many people from around the world who want to come and play golf in Scotland now, and we're delighted to have them. It's wonderful, because they come here and they go to the pubs and they stay in the hotels. But there's a flip side, and that is sometimes, if I wanted to go down and play at 9 a.m. on a Monday, I can't get in. But we are delighted with the growth of the game. It's very encouraging.'
A recent study conducted by Sheffield Hallam University found that golf tourism in St. Andrews generates £317 million for the Scottish economy each year — the equivalent of the economic impact of three Open Championships. And in Ireland, golf contributes €717 million in economic value, supporting 15,600 jobs.
Courses are feeling the pressure of this boom, but that does not mean their ideals are lost. There is a balance to be struck between protecting membership access and continuing to welcome visitors, as these venues always have. It's a challenge, but it is not a crack in the foundation.
This is all unsurprising: The last vestige of clubs that promote golf's core values reside in the regions that nurtured the sport centuries ago. A course can be one of the world's best without having an exclusionary model — that's how it was always supposed to be. The Open has Royal Portrush in the spotlight this week, but it's the local clubs in little-known coastal towns that will truly carry the torch.
There are so many places that get it right. And they're open, waiting for you.