{"id":588056,"date":"2026-07-16T04:16:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T04:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/588056\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T04:16:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T04:16:21","slug":"ra-remains-committed-to-bringing-open-championship-to-portmarnock-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/588056\/","title":{"rendered":"R&A remains committed to bringing Open Championship to Portmarnock \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The time frame may be taking longer than envisaged, but the R&A\u2019s commitment on bringing The Open<\/a> to Portmarnock Golf Club<\/a> remains a viable proposition as part of a long-term strategy to place it alongside Royal Portrush<\/a> and have two courses on the island of Ireland on the championship rota. <\/p>\n

It is expected that Portmarnock will be added to The Open rota and become the first course outside of the UK to play host to golf\u2019s oldest major championship, with the AIG Women\u2019s Open forming part of the vision. <\/p>\n

The Government has committed up to \u20ac40 million to support the necessary infrastructure work, in tandem with Fingal County Council, and also as part of its strategy to bring major international sport to the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re getting pretty close,\u201d said Mark Darbon, the chief executive of the R&A, on Tuesday. \u201cIt\u2019s a complicated venue because of the scale of The Open Championship. So there\u2019s been a lot of great feasibility work with the golf club themselves, with the local authority, with [the Irish] Government. We\u2019ve undertaken a big feasibility study. That work is pretty much done. We\u2019ve confirmed that we believe we can take an Open Championship there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re looking to do is build a model that opens up opportunities for the AIG Women\u2019s Open and The Open for many, many years to come. So that\u2019s the dialogue we\u2019re in right now with the Irish Government, and we\u2019re optimistic that those discussions are heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the spirit of transparency, it\u2019s taken a bit longer than we thought it may, but it\u2019s complicated doing all of that feasibility work. We\u2019re hoping to have a pretty clear view by the end of the year for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The time frame may be taking longer than envisaged, but the R&A\u2019s commitment on bringing The Open to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,131570,249433,249434,132],"class_list":["post-588056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-open-championship","tag-portmarnock-golf-club","tag-royal-portrush","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116927724748223471","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}