The Open’s Identity Crisis: Why Golf’s Greatest Championship Is Missing Its Greatest Stages

I’ve been covering professional golf for 35 years, and I’ve watched The Open Championship evolve from an insular British institution into a truly global event. But here’s what keeps me up at night: we’re rotating through the same handful of venues while some of the planet’s greatest links courses sit idle, waiting for a phone call that will never come.

That’s the real story behind this week’s deep dive into Open-worthy venues. It’s not just a romantic exercise in “what if?” It’s a reckoning with how The R&A manages one of sport’s most prestigious championships—and whether logistics and infrastructure concerns have begun trumping pure golf quality.

The Elephant in the Room: Why Geography Beats Greatness

Let me be direct: Royal County Down is the best course not to have hosted The Open, and it’s probably better than several that have. I played it last summer for the first time, and it genuinely reset my top-10 ranking. The Mourne Mountains providing that dramatic backdrop, the front nine that feels like links golf distilled to its absolute essence, holes 2-4 that might represent the finest stretch of approach-shot golf anywhere—this is a Major championship venue in every conceivable way.

“It’s often said that Portrush is a driver’s course and County Down is an approach-shot course – all of it is just brilliant.”

Except The Open will never come here. Not for reasons of quality. For reasons of buses and hotel rooms and corporate hospitality tents.

That friction—between what makes for the greatest golf and what makes for the smoothest operational logistics—has become the dominant force shaping where The Open travels. When I was caddying for Tom Lehman in the ’90s, we played every course The R&A sanctioned, and you could feel the pure golf-first mentality. Today, I sense a different calculus entirely.

The Portmarnock Precedent: How The Open Goes Global

The real news buried in this article isn’t about the courses themselves. It’s about what R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers said regarding Portmarnock. For the first time in Open history, there’s genuine momentum toward hosting The Championship outside the UK and Ireland entirely. Potentially as soon as 2030.

“If the R&A aren’t keen on a particular venue then they very smoothly put a line through it without causing too much offence.”

That’s diplomatic language for “we control this narrative,” but what strikes me is the admission that they’re open to it. After 163 years of keeping The Open within a specific geography, that’s seismic.

Portmarnock makes perfect sense. It’s a natural, fair links that would genuinely delight players and spectators. The closing stretch is tailor-made for championship drama. But here’s the real insight: The R&A isn’t choosing Portmarnock because it’s the best available venue. They’re choosing it because it solves a scheduling and infrastructure puzzle while remaining defensible as “links golf.”

The Courses We’re Missing—And What It Says About Us

Consider the gap in the current schedule. After Birkdale this year and St Andrews in 2027, we hit a void. Muirfield and Turnberry “keen to get back on the calendar,” but nothing locked down. In my experience, that’s code for “we’re working through some conversations.”

Meanwhile, here’s what we’re not seeing:

• Royal Dornoch (World ranking: 6) — A course in the Scottish Highlands that represents everything romantic about links golf, with a front nine and that extraordinary view from the 9th fairway that would make any championship committee weep. The logistical challenges are real. The golf is transcendent.
• North Berwick (World ranking: 14) — Imagine the closing holes deciding a Major. “Pit” with its famous wall. “Redan,” copied worldwide. “Home,” finishing like the Old Course itself. The West Links divides some opinion, but if you’re unmoved by it, the article argues, you’ve lost the spirit of the game.
• Ballybunion (World ranking: 9) — An Irish venue that blends Kingsbarns’ fun factor with more natural landscape. The piece notes the chances of The Open coming here are “zero,” but should that really be the case if it’s legitimately one of the world’s 10 best courses?
• Royal Porthcawl (World ranking: 21) — Wales’ undisputed No. 1 that’s hosted The Senior Open three times and The Women’s Open. Every few years there’s renewed momentum. Every few years logistics get in the way.

What This Really Means for Professional Golf

Here’s what troubles me: We’ve created a system where championship venues are selected on a weighted matrix that includes golf quality as one factor among many. Infrastructure, broadcasting access, corporate entertainment capacity, government support, accessibility—these all matter, and they should matter to some degree.

But somewhere along the way, pure golf merit seems to have slipped down the priority list.

“The course is spectacularly good, the early run of holes make the most of the coastline and the finish is notoriously tricky. Even off the very back tees it struggles to get beyond 7,000 yards but maybe that will be less of a talking point in the coming years.”

That comment about Royal Porthcawl’s yardage troubles me too. Since when is a championship course expected to stretch to 7,000 yards to be “worthy”? The world’s greatest links courses—the ones that genuinely test the world’s greatest players—aren’t always the longest. They’re the fairest. The most strategic. The most honest.

In my three decades covering this tour, I’ve noticed something: the best golf stories don’t come from the most convenient venues. They come from places that force players to adapt, to think, to execute under pressure against a course’s authentic character rather than just its yardage.

Optimism in the Conversation

What I do appreciate about this piece is that it starts the conversation. Kingsbarns got The Women’s Open in 2017 precisely because someone was willing to take a chance on a newer course (opened 2000) in a less traditional venue. It’s now considered essential Championship golf. Maybe that precedent matters.

The fact that The R&A is openly discussing taking The Open global for the first time—even if Portmarnock doesn’t happen until 2030—suggests they’re not entirely locked into geographical conservatism.

What we need now is for golf itself—not logistics, not infrastructure, but pure golf quality—to win a few more battles in this conversation. Because Royal County Down, Royal Dornoch, and North Berwick shouldn’t be dreaming. They should be planning.