An announcement about Portmarnock Golf Club being added to the Open Championship rota seems imminent after a positive update today by Mark Darbon, chief executive of the R&A, the body which organises the oldest major golf championship.<\/p>\n
The Government has previously committed “provisional support” to Portmarnock hosting the Open Championship and the Women’s Open.<\/p>\n
“I think we’re getting pretty close,” he said this morning at Royal Birkdale near Liverpool which will stage the 154th Open over the next four days.<\/p>\n
“It’s a complicated venue because of the scale of The Open Championship so there’s been a lot of great feasibility work with the golf club themselves, with the local authority, with government. We’ve undertaken a big feasibility study.<\/p>\n
“That work is pretty much done. We’ve confirmed that we believe we can take an Open Championship there,” he said.<\/p>\n
The question regarding when, even approximately, it might happen is yet to be answered because there has been a notable shift in the conversation due to the sheer amount of work that will be necessary to stage the event at the north Dublin course.<\/p>\n
“What we’re looking to do is build a model that opens up opportunities for the AIG Women’s Open and The Open for many, many years to come. So that’s the dialogue we’re in right now with the Irish government, and we’re optimistic that those discussions are heading in the right direction,” he added.<\/p>\n
Such an undertaking of preparatory works both on and off the course would be of such a scale as to make sense for Portmarnock to be part of the entire Open rota going forward.<\/p>\n
“Time frame? Look, in the spirit of transparency, it’s taken a bit longer than I think we thought it would but it’s complicated doing all of that feasibility work.<\/p>\n
“We’re hoping to have a pretty clear view by the end of the year for sure,” Darbon concluded.<\/p>\n
Dubliner, and two time Open winner, Padraig Harrington added that he hopes the event happens during his career.<\/p>\n
“I’d love it to happen in my time, Portmarnock would be just an unbelievable venue,” he told RT\u00c9 Sport.<\/p>\n
“It’d be the only Open in a capital city so the crowds, the atmosphere, people who come out.”<\/p>\n
“The golf course is fantastic. It’s capable of the space, (0:37) it’s capable of hosting an event of that size.”<\/p>\n
Portmarnock has hosted the Irish Open more times than any other course on the island, with the most recent of its 19 stagings happening in 2003.<\/p>\n
For Harrington, it’s a course he feels players will enjoy playing on.<\/p>\n
“The golf course is unusual,” he added. “It’s very fair, which is strange for a links golf course.<\/p>\n
“It’s got quite flat fairways and flat greens, so I think players will like it. It’s not a tricky golf course in any shape or form.<\/p>\n
“Maybe (hole) 14 is the only one that you could describe as being quirky enough. Outside of that, I think players will love the event, love the venue. I think spectators will love it.<\/p>\n
“If it can match up to Portrush, wouldn’t that be great? There’s a high standard there on the island. Portrush has been a great Open and I do believe Portmarnock will be a great Open for the players, which is quite important when you’re coming from the players’ side.<\/p>\n
“A great Open for the players and clearly… am I allowed to say it will be a great Open for the spectators and the corporates?!<\/p>\n
“I think everybody will enjoy that one.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An announcement about Portmarnock Golf Club being added to the Open Championship rota seems imminent after a positive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-552134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}