Sky Sports commentator Ewen Murray believes The Open will return to Turnberry one day.
The venue on Scotland’s southwest coast has hosted four Open Championships but has no prospects of doing so again under the ownership of President Donald Trump.
The R&A made this much clear in January 2021 after the Capitol riots in America but coincidentally in the time since Turnberry last hosted The Open in 2009, the course has gone from strength to strength.
Martin Ebert led renovations in 2015 and more enhancements are to come under the renowned architect. Turnberry is a world-class golf location, albeit incredibly expensive to play, and arguably more impressive than a portion of the courses still in line to host golf’s oldest major.
Murray, a four-time Open participant and now a vastly experienced and respected figure on the mic, says the event belongs to the R&A and the identity of the owner wouldn’t matter compared to the spectacle of The Open.
“I think it will (be back on the Rota),” Murray told NCG. “Trump won’t be around forever. I have met Donald Trump on a couple of occasions, and I never say it, but I was very impressed with him as a person.
“If I look into his politics, which nothing in my life is politics, I don’t do politics or religion because they cause trouble and because people have opinions on them, and their opinions won’t change. But whoever owns the course really wouldn’t matter because that week belongs to the R&A, and it belongs to golf fans across the world.
“That Monday to Sunday, it belongs to them. It’s not associated with someone else, it’s the R&A and the home of golf and the people who make the rules and everything we enjoy in golf, everything we adhere to in golf, so I would take the owner out of the way and look at it and if it hasn’t got the infrastructure for a modern Open, then fine we don’t go there, we’ll go somewhere that does.”
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Ewen Murray: ‘Political views have got anything to do with our sport’
Aside from the inevitability of Trump’s presence at an Open deflecting attention to him rather than the golf, there would also be logistical and infrastructural headaches for the R&A with a modern-day Open at Turnberry.
In 2005, Turnberry was given the 2009 Open despite concerns about road access, but a traffic management scheme was installed to cope. The course was also extended by 247 yards since its last Open in 1994.
Post 2020, The Open has become a beast that dictates attendance via ballot given such popular demand and this means the venue must then accommodate the footfall. 250,000 fans went to Royal Troon in 2024, but could that many enter the doors of Turnberry?
On a recent episode of the Chipping Forecast Podcast, BBC broadcasters Andrew Cotter and Iain Carter debated which issue is the biggest obstacle to Turnberry’s view of the Open Rota in ‘chicken and the egg style’.
What came first: concerns about hosting a mammoth Open or the ownership of President Trump? Cotter argued the former, quoting an attendance figure of 109,000 when Stewart Cink ruined Tom Watson’s Open dream 15 years ago, a figure that appears prehistoric given the dizzy crowds that swarmed to Glasgow in July. This school of thought says Trump’s emergence on the scene in 2014 served only to push an already retreating Turnberry further towards the back of the queue.
“I don’t think political views have got anything to do with our sport,” Murray said when I posed this debate to him.
“I think these two things are apart and political views are always going to cause opinion. Going there for The Open would be the reason I would want to go there, I don’t really care who owns it. But every time we’ve had an Open at Turnberry, it has been a great success.
“You go back to (Greg) Norman in 1986, and you go back to the Duel in the Sun in 1977. These were fabulous Open Championships, and I think it would be again. I take what Andrew was saying, 109,000 is nowhere near enough when you look at St Andrews, Carnoustie, Birkdale, and Royal St Georges.
“These places have the infrastructure to host an Open, there’s wide open spaces at all of these places. There isn’t at Lytham and yet, Lytham has produced some great Open Championships as well, but in the modern world it’s about how we can get the most out of this, and 109,000 wouldn’t do it.
“The price would have to go up for the R&A to make their money, but a lot of their money comes from worldwide television. So, I don’t see them being really hit by 109,000 fans. The money would be made up in television rights and whatever else. Sponsors. I think it’s a pity that we might not see that again, but we might. You never know.”
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