R&A giving 'proper look' at Ireland's Portmarnock as Open Championship site
George Savaricas catches up with Xander Schauffele, Rickie Fowler, and other PGA Tour golfers to get their reaction to Brian Rolapp being named the PGA Tour's next CEO.
The Royal & Ancient Golf Club talks about a feasibility study for The Open to return to Turnberry. Far more serious is whether to take golf's oldest championship outside the United Kingdom for the first time.
The topic was Portmarnock in Ireland. The response from Mark Darbon, the R&A's new CEO, was that 'we're serious.'
'We're having a proper look at it,' Darbon said in a recent interview 'It's clearly a great course.'
Darbon said he went to Portmarnock, located on a peninsula about 10 miles (16 kilometers) northwest of Dublin, for the first time last month.
'Wonderful links golf course,' he said. 'And clearly a links course that provides a challenge to the best golfers in the world is right in the heart of our thinking about where we take our prized Open Championship.'
Darbon pointed out the history with Portmarnock and the R&A, specifically the Walker Cup in 1991 and the British Amateur in 1949 and 2019, along with the Women's British Amateur last year and in 1931.
'We think if we're happy taking our Amateur Championships there, why not consider it for the Open, too?' he said.
Work remains, particularly the logistics of a massive crowd — The Open is all about 'big' these days — on and off the peninsula.
The PGA Championship a decade ago flirted with the idea of going around the world. For the British Open to leave the U.K. for the first time would not open more borders.
'I think the simple answer is 'no,' it wouldn't open up our thinking more broadly,' Darbon said. 'If you go back in history, the home territory of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews is the British Isles, basically. We think if we've got this great history with the Republic of Ireland and its great golf course, then why not look at it?'
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