R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers trumpeted the Home of Golf as the ideal venue to host the showpiece 150th Open but admitted “politics” is a complicating factor in taking the event back to Trump’s course in Ayrshire any time soon.
Carnoustie will stage this year’s championship in July followed by Portrush in 2019 and Royal St George’s in 2020, with an English course following St Andrews. That means Turnberry will be overlooked for longer than any other course on the Open rota having last staged it in 2009.
“It would be very complex having an Open at Turnberry at the moment,” said Slumbers.
“We have a criteria about which course we want to go to and part of that is clearly macroeconomic impacts, and clearly part of that is a little bit about politics. It’s a course where you’ve got the ownership issue of the course.
“We tend to use this word rota, which is not a good thing actually because rota implies that there’s an order that you’re going to do them in. It’s a pool of courses and Turnberry remains one of those ten courses and it will be considered every time that we come back to Scotland.
“Turnberry is a fantastic golf course and will be a great venue when we get there.”
Slumbers confirmed this year’s Amateur Championship will be staged at a club with an all-male membership, Royal Aberdeen, as will next year’s at Portmarnock.
“We want to take our championships to clubs that have mixed membership and have a quality, but we also said that where we had contractually already agreed, we would honour that contract. We had already agreed with Royal Aberdeen and with Portmarnock, and it’s important that one honours one’s contracts,” he said.