It was on Friday of the Horizon Irish Open this year that Rory McIlroy, talking to the press after his round, first made public that negotiations were taking place in the background with a view to bringing the world’s oldest championship to the storied Dublin links of Portmarnock Golf Club.
A 19-time Irish Open host, it has also hosted the Walker Cup, the Amateur Championship and is set to welcome the game’s top female amateurs in hosting the 2024 Women’s Amateur Championship. But as we all know, the Open Championship itself is a different story.
One of the largest sporting events held annually across both Britain and Ireland, its return to Portrush in 2019 was the first time it had left mainland United Kingdom in 68 years, but support is growing for a first staging in the Republic of Ireland.
Talking to John Huggan in an interview for Golf Digest, R&A CEO Martin Slumbers again expressed the organisation’s support for Portmarnock as a venue should the necessary infrastructural shortcomings be solved.
“The club has talked to us about it,” he says. “The course is a world-class links. But there are infrastructure challenges. We are going to play the Women’s Amateur there in 2024 and we had the Amateur Championship there a couple of years ago. They have had the Walker Cup there, too. The position at the moment, which we support, is that the club is working with the Irish government to ascertain if there would be support for them to make a credible proposition. We will wait and see what happens there.”
These words follow a similar pattern to what Slumbers said at Royal Melbourne last month where he was present at the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship, but the repeated suggestion that the R&A are in favour of Portmarnock as a venue can only be viewed as a positive step.
Portmarnock Golf Club itself had issued a press release in early October, officially declaring what McIlroy had alluded to – that conversations had taken place and that both parties were keen on the possibility, which led to Minister for Sport and Tourism Catherine Martin pledging the government’s support in helping to make this a reality.
“Securing either Open would be very significant for the game of golf in Ireland and our international profile as a must visit destination for golf tourism,” said the Minister, and given the proximity to Dublin City and airport, the hundreds of thousands who flock to the Open Championship and the Women’s Open Championship would find it extremely welcome as well.
It is likely that a Women’s Open would be staged first, however. Given the smaller [at present] stature of the female equivalent, less infrastructural requirements would be necessary and it could act as a sort of trial run to see the feasibility of hosting the R&A’s showpiece event.
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