Can we please stop playing the Open at St Andrews all the time?
The 150th Open Championship will now be held at St Andrews in 2022 and we can all agree that it could not and should not be played anywhere else.
It has also been confirmed that Royal Liverpool and Royal Troon will host the 151st and 152nd edition of golf’s oldest major.
But if the global pandemic that caused the postponement of the 2020 Open has given the R&A anything apart from an organisational headache, it’s the chance to rethink and reset.
The 2022 Open will be the 30th held over the Old Course, and we probably won’t have to wait long for the 31st. We could be heading back to the Auld Grey Toun as soon as 2025 if it resumes its hosting duties in years that are a multiple of five. That started in 1990 and was only changed to an intended 2021 for anniversary reasons.
The first visit was made back in 1873 – a strike rate of one every five years, give or take.
By contrast, you may be surprised to learn, there have only been 10 Opens at Royal Birkdale, 11 at Royal Lytham & St Annes and 12 at Royal Liverpool.
In other words, the total number of Opens held in England’s feted North-West only just eclipses St Andrews’ tally.
The continuing adherence to five-yearly visits is surely unnecessary. Broadly speaking, St Andrews hosts two Opens for every one that the other venues get to hold.
There have been times in the tournament’s history where there has been, if not a shortage, then certainly not a surfeit of suitable venues. That’s especially become the case as the event has got bigger and bigger requiring infrastructure demands that go far further in determining a venue’s suitability to host than whether the closing stretch is sufficiently testing.
To this day, elements of the Muirfield hierarchy manage to exude a take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards hosting the Open, although the speed with which they changed their membership policy after being threatened with a removal of Open-hosting privileges was probably more revealing.
In fact, there is actually a dignified queue right now – I would argue that we have never been so well stocked with great venues, nearly all of which are tried and tested in the modern era.
Moving clockwise from St Andrews, we have Muirfield, St George’s, Hoylake, Birkdale, Lytham, Portrush, Turnberry, Troon and Carnoustie.
That’s 10 venues and, you would have thought, a nice, neat rota, if I can call it that, for the R&A to adhere to.
A decade is just right for me. It’s enough time so that there is a sense of eras changing from one visit to the next. Each year’s venue feels like an odd but richly satisfying combination of familiar but fresh. It’s like reacquainting yourself with an old friend.
As a golf fan, you are rewarded with historical knowledge of a venue when you can remember past exploits at a certain hole, but it’s all far enough in the past so that you can enjoy that ‘new toy’ thrill.
It’s what makes, for me, the Open and US Open my favourite two majors, heresy though it may well be to relegate the Masters to third place.
It doesn’t matter how great Augusta National is, there is an absence of intrigue each year because the holes are so familiar.
Give me an Oakmont or a Shinnecock or a Merion for the US Open and I will drink in the history, wallowing in the refreshed memories of its most recent champions, the details of which I may have temporarily forgotten.
Going back to a venue 10 years on gives it a certain vitality.
Take this a stage further and forever seek out new venues, like the PGA does, and two things happen. Firstly, you will inevitably compromise on quality from time to time. And second, you lose the sense of identity.
We all know what type of course ‘feels’ like a US Open or Open venue – and of course Augusta is just Augusta – but that’s not the case for the PGA.
My favourite Open venues are the slightly less feted Scottish ones. You sense it means a little more for them, plus you get the highest quality of fans.
As such, I couldn’t wait for Carnoustie in 2018. It was exciting just to think about going back to the Angus links for the Open for the first time in 11 years.
Don’t get me wrong, the 2022 instalment at St Andrews will be amazing too. Just not quite as special as if it was going to be the first Open there since Louis Oosthuizen won in 2010.
Do you agree with Dan that the Open shouldn’t go back to St Andrews as often as it does? Let us know in the comments below, or you can tweet him.
Subscribe to NCG
Dan Murphy
Dan loves links golf, which doesn't mean he is very good at it. He is a four-handicapper at Alwoodley. A qualified journalist and senior editor with 25 years’ experience, he was the long-time editor of NCG. His passion is golf courses and he is the founding editor of NCG Top 100s course rankings. He loves nothing more than discovering and highlighting courses that are worthy of greater recognition.
