By Ben Parsons - Bunkered
“We’re going back to Muirfield,” insisted departing R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers at last year’s Open.
It has long been a matter of when, not if, the Open will return to
the famed East Lothian links, but Muirfield has been kept waiting a
little longer after it was confirmed the 2027 Championship will go to St Andrews.
Mark Darbon, Slumbers’ successor, confirmed that after renewals at
Royal Portrush in 2025 and Royal Birkdale in 2026, the 155th Open will
return to the Old Course. It maintains the five-year cycle of the Open
at St Andrews, with just one exception since 1990.
Muirfield, meanwhile, will now have to wait a minimum of 15 years to
stage golf’s oldest major, with the 2028 venue yet to be announced. Phil
Mickelson was the last Muirfield champion in 2013 and the course has
serious Open pedigree having staged the battle for the Claret Jug on 15
other occasions.
Muirfield had been briefly struck from the rota in May 2016 after a
vote by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers to allow women to
become members failed, but was restored by the R&A ten months later
when the same proposal was belatedly passed.
Yet while the AIG Women’s Open visited Muirfield in 2022, we’re still
not exactly sure when the world’s best male players will next descend
on the Gullane links.
That, of course, being Guy Kinnings, the DP World Tour chief
executive. The Renaissance Club is scheduled to host the Scottish Open
until 2026, but any future change in location would presumably also
require input from the PGA Tour given the US-based circuit now
co-sanctions the event.
It is unclear whether those conversations have taken place, or indeed
whether Muirfield is next in line in the mind of new boss Darbon. But
it does seem almost inconceivable that the third most used Open venue
after St Andrews and Prestwick won’t make its return – at least before
the decade is out.
