'It's A Wonderful Golf Course' - R&A Chief Executive Martin Slumbers On Portmarnock's Open Aspirations

R&A Chief Executive Martin Slumbers has declared Portmarnock's efforts to join The Open's rota of host courses as "interesting" but admitted "it's incredibly difficult to think about another course on there."

In October, The R&A announced it was investigating the feasibility of taking The Open to Portmarnock at some point in the future. The club has also enlisted the help of the Irish goverment to look at various logistical challenges. 

Paul McGinley has spoken on the subject, saying Portmarnock is as good as any current Open course and expressing his confidence that the Claret Jug will head to Ireland at some point. However, he believes the process could take at least a decade.

Slumbers revealed his thoughts on the subject to Golf Monthly at the recent Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship, which you can read below, along with his musings on the 2024 Open at Troon, the AIG Women's Open at St Andrews and the Asia-Pacific Amateur. 

Can Portmarnock become an Open course and what does it take to get on the Open rota?

I think it’s very difficult to get onto the Open rota. We have 10 courses currently, one of which is Turnberry. So, nine plus Turnberry. It’s incredibly difficult to think about another course on there, but Portmarnock is interesting. The situation now is – they had been talking to us and we’ve welcomed them approaching the Irish government to see whether there’s a way of working so that they can put together a compelling package to bring the event to Portmarnock. It’s still very early days and a lot of work needs to be done, but if they can work out some of the infrastructure issues, and some of those are significant, I think The Open at Portmarnock would be great. It’s a wonderful golf course and I’d love to see the best players in the world competing on it.

The Open returns to Royal Troon next year, a venue that’s witnessed great championships. What can we look forward to?

Something I’m really excited about is that 2016 was the first Open I was responsible for, so it’s the first venue I’m going back to. It’s a really good golf course. We’ve made some changes to the golf course. Last winter we put in six new tees and three new bunkers. That has stiffened up the front nine. But it remains a course where on the front nine you have to score and on the back nine you hold on for dear life!

When I took over, one of the things I wanted to do was find more money to invest into the game. And to do that, we needed to improve the commercialisation of The Open Championship. Some people don’t like it, but we’ve done it to service the game at the level that we want to. You’ve heard me say that I think big time sport needs big time crowds and you’ll see that next year. We’ve built a sales and marketing machine for golf that is terrific. The total number of spectators this time out at Troon will be significantly higher than we had in 2016. The Championship is bigger and I’m pleased to see that. Next year will be a clear reflection of what has happened in the last eight years to The Open. It’s going to be a lot bigger.

What are the plans for the Women’s Open at St Andrews next year?

We are trying to build a business model, an engagement model and a fan experience at the Women’s Open that makes it financially sustainable. We lose a lot of money on the Women’s Open, which is fine because we’re investing into women’s golf.

What we feel strongly about is that women’s golf needs to be branded separately, looked at differently than just being like men’s golf. Giving the players the chance to show us just how incredibly talented they are. They are extraordinarily good.

The market research we did over the last few years which culminated at Walton Heath this year was all around, how do we create that different brand? The brand was all about families. To move away from the audience being predominantly male… I think we cracked that at Walton Heath with a different spectator village, far more women and girls watching than previously, we went up to 51,000 spectators. When we get to The Old Course next year, we’re going to continue to build on that same theme. Our plan is that with the combination of the family experience, and the magical allure of the Old Course, we’ll hopefully be higher than 51,000 and that should start to create long-term financial sustainability for the Women’s Open.

The Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship is now in its 14th year. How pleased are you with how its developed and how it has spawned other tournaments around the world?

I wasn’t at The R&A when the AAC was founded, but I don’t think anyone would have predicted that it would have grown to this stature, to become one of the biggest amateur events in the world.

Really interesting is not only how this championship has grown over the years but also what it has started. We now have the women’s version – the Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific – with a field right up there in the top two or three women’s events in the world.

We also have the LAAC and the Women’s Amateur Latin America, and in February we’re covering Africa with the Africa Amateur. None of it would have happened without this championship. It’s a reflection that this is a global game.

And, when I look at professional golf and elite amateur golf, I think elite amateur golf is doing a much better job in showing that it’s a global game.