British Open 2024: What it's really like when the Open comes to a wee Scottish town?

TROON, Scotland — It’s hard to find even a shred of opposition to the British Open rolling into Troon, a town of a little more than 15,000 residents on the south Ayrshire coast of Scotland, for the first time since 2016. Well, there is a minor frustration—and it’s not exclusive to Royal Troon, at all—that the Open is charging £7.50 for a pint of beer at the course. A local Facebook group raised concerns about the price, and the solution from several users was to bury beverages on the beach beside the front nine before the tournament and dig them up during play. The problem? That’s well beyond the ropes.

Beside the £110 being charged for a ticket to Sunday’s final round of the championship, the predicted congestion, road closures and a record 250,000 people coming to Troon, it’s hard to be annoyed with a tournament that, in 2016—when 75,000 fewer spectators—produced £64 million into the local economy. The numbers for 2024 are expected to far exceed those of eight years ago; by comparison the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool in 2023 generated £187 million for the Wirral and Liverpool City regions.

To learn more about the impact of golf’s oldest championship on a small town, we walked over to the Troon Links, a public facility featuring the Darley, Lochgreen and Fullarton courses. Coincidentally, three-time champion Jack Nicklaus qualified for his debut Open in 1962 at Lochgreen. At Troon Links’ clubhouse, we spoke to Bruce Harris, the facility’s director of golf, and Robbie Clyde, the chief executive of Scottish Golf. Clyde, who has spent 30 years working in sports and major events, was the project director for the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. He joined Scottish Golf from Events Scotland.

Clyde had observed over the years that the smaller the Open host town, the bigger the impact of every pound. “£100 million into Wirral and Liverpool is great, but £100 million into Ayrshire and south Ayrshire is a significant injection every eight or 10 years,” Clyde said. “There’s also the intangible benefit of South Ayrshire being broadcast on TV to the world.”

Clyde pointed out the impact on Troon was not just felt during tournament week. “The build for the Open Championship started around April. Putting up the grandstands, TV towers, spectator village, all those require contractors, electricians, and they're staying locally,” Clyde said. “Those contractors need hotels, food and other services. It will also take those contractors about a month to take all the infrastructure down.”

He acknowledged hosting the Open was not without obstacles, especially in rural towns. “Bringing 250,000 people into Troon and surrounding areas is logistically challenging,” Clyde said. “Working with councils like South Ayrshire, the R&A needed to demonstrate that there was a tangible benefit.”

Local resident Barbara Birnie, who lives near Royal Troon, helped her two sons, Callum and Blair, have a bake sale for Open attendees in their front yard. Birnie noted a small provision that Troon residents wanted improved from the 2016 edition was better directing foot traffic into town.

“Out of Troon train station, fans turn left to the course, but Troon town is [one mile] to the right,” she said. “They [the R&A and local council] have done a better job this time compared to 2016 of encouraging visitors to go into town and eat and drink. There has been a real buzz about the town. We just wanted businesses that aren’t right near the course to benefit from the Open, too.”

Locals noted the biggest winner of the Open rolling into Troon was accommodation providers. Even though the 35-mile train ride from Glasgow to Troon allowed plenty of fans to commute from afar, a quick search on Booking.com found 97 percent of accommodation in Troon was unavailable.

One of the closest accommodations to Royal Troon is the South Beach Hotel, a half mile north of the clubhouse. It has been lively all week with well-heeled guests enjoying the hotel’s Open-themed entertainment, which include Scottish music. Given its proximity to the course, the 32-room establishment is often busy during spring and summer even outside of an Open, thanks mainly to visiting American golfers. A room then runs around £150 per night, but during Open week, it’s up to £500 with breakfast and dinner included. Each day of the Open, including practice rounds, saw the equivalent of a normal week’s worth of food and beverage intake, according to its owner, Stewart Watt. But Watt says it’s not just about the tournament, it’s an opportunity to show off Troon to visiting golfers for years to come.

“[Hosting the Open] is absolutely fantastic for the hotel and puts us on the map; golfers see Troon on TV and want to come and play,” Watt said. “What would be bad about all these people coming into your town?”

The answer is only minor inconvenience to residents and businesses. The South Beach Hotel, and similar operators, lost revenue from tourists when the course is closed in the lead up to the championship. But that’s made back and more this week and in future years with anticipation of another Open coming at some point in the next decade.

As Birnie points out, there are also little adjustments some residents must make, such as requiring a parking permit outside their house during the tournament. “But they communicate with residents so far in advance that we've known about that, and what the road closures were going to be,” she said. “Locals also love a walk on the beach and to cut over the golf course, but we can't do that. It's only for three or four weeks, so it’s not really a negative.”

For the inconvenience, there is some compensation via improvements to infrastructure. Roads leading into the Royal Troon, which are lined with residential housing, were resurfaced earlier this year. “And you can tell buildings in town have been given a fresh lick of paint,” Birnie said.

Ultimately, though, the golf landscape is the biggest winner. On Wednesday before the championship, Troon Links, which had two of its three courses open, saw its tee sheet fully booked. There were six four-balls per hour from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., totalling about 576 green fee-paying golfers. “That’s unheard of,” Harris said. One can only imagine the surge in top-rated links around Ayrshire, like Prestwick and Western Gailes.

South Ayrshire Council also invested significant money into golf leading up to the Open, although it was not explicitly stated that had anything to do the championship coming to town. In early 2023, South Ayrshire designated £5 million for golf in the area to be rolled out “over the next three years” which included improving facilities at Lochgreen as well as renovations to the layouts at Darley and Belleisle golf courses.

“Some local authorities are looking to cut back [on golf], but the vision here is we’ll get wonderful facilities and tourism on the west coast of Scotland,” Harris said.

Clyde says Scottish Golf counts 210,000 members of courses and “about half a million regular golfers [six to 10 games a year] who are not members of clubs. The key is converting those regular golfers into more regular,” Clyde said.

When the Open comes to small towns on the R&A rota, there are hazards, sure. But as Watt contends, “You’ve got to look at it in the long term.” It’s a small price to pay for having one of biggest sporting events in the world visit every four to eight years.

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Is it the British Open or the Open Championship? The name of the final men’s major of the golf season is a subject of continued discussion. The event’s official name, as explained in this op-ed by former R&A chairman Ian Pattinson, is the Open Championship. But since many United States golf fans continue to refer to it as the British Open, and search news around the event accordingly, Golf Digest continues to utilize both names in its coverage.

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