Feasibility study will shape Turnberry's Open future

A feasibility study is under way to establish whether Donald Trump's Turnberry golf course can again host the Open Championship, new R&A chief executive Mark Dabron has revealed.

He insisted the main issue is not who owns the course, in this case the president of the United States, but whether the Ayrshire venue and town is equipped to cope with the numbers attracted to such a world-class tournament.

The Open was held at Turnberry's iconic Ailsa Course for the fourth and final time in 2009 and Dabron pointed out that his governing body is "blessed to have such a wonderful pool of venues that can stage the Open Championship".

"At Turnberry, there are definitely some logistical and commercial challenges that we face around the road, rail and accommodation infrastructure," he said.

"We're doing some feasibility work around what it would look like to return to that venue and the investment that it would require."

Dabron was quizzed about Turnberry at the official launch of this year's Open, which will return to Royal Portrush in July for the first time since 2019 and will be the biggest sporting event ever staged in Northern Ireland.

"The last time we were there, I think we had just over 120,000 people," he said. "We've just announced that this summer we're going to welcome nearly 280,000 people here."

This year's Open is already a sellout, with 278,000 tickets sold and Dabron revealed that there will be some changes from the layout from six years ago and to cope with the 40,000 increase in attendance from their last visit.

Turnberry, meanwhile, has been given £200m of improvements since being bought by Trump in 2014.

"A modern Open Championship is a large-scale event," Dabron added. "What we know for sure is the golf course is brilliant, so at some point we'd love to be back there.

"We consistently work with our venues and their owners and operators to talk about what an Open Championship demands and how we work with them to bring that to life."