The tee-times for Sunday’s final round could be brought forward to avoid a clash with football’s World Cup final, should England make it.<\/p>\n
If England win Wednesday’s semi-final, they will play either France or Spain in New Jersey at 20:00 BST, with the golf scheduled to finish around 18:30.<\/p>\n
However, should a play-off be needed to decide the winner at Royal Birkdale in Southport, the two events could overlap.<\/p>\n
BBC Sport understands that Open organisers the R&A are remaining flexible on any scheduling and that no decision has been made.<\/p>\n
Stakeholders and broadcasters are likely to be consulted before any final decision.<\/p>\n
A clash has always been on the radar of the R&A, although England’s run to the World Cup semi-final has brought it into sharper focus.<\/p>\n
In April, R&A chief executive Mark Darbon said: “We’re obviously conscious of other events happening on that date. <\/p>\n
“As we approach the championship, we’ll ensure we try and avoid that clash wherever possible. <\/p>\n
“Of course some things are out of our control in terms of play-offs and the like, but we will attempt to avoid a clash, yes.”<\/p>\n
The Open uses a three-hole play-off with the aggregate score determining the winner. Should there still be a tie, a sudden-death play-off will follow.<\/p>\n
This would mean deciding the winner of the Claret Jug, and the presentation ceremony that follows, could come close to clashing with the football.<\/p>\n
Even if play were to finish as scheduled, it would leave little time for those also wanting to watch the football to get away from the Merseyside course.<\/p>\n
The last time an Open Championship was decided by a play-off was in 2015, with Zach Johnson beating Louis Oosthuizen and Marc Leishman at St Andrews.<\/p>\n
The R&A will hold its customary pre-tournament news conference on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tee-times for Sunday’s final round could be brought forward to avoid a clash with football’s World Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-691818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}