Is Turnberry Still On The Open Rota?

Royal Liverpool plays host to the 2023 Open Championship and Royal Troon will welcome the event in 2024. The championship returns to Royal Portrush in 2025 after a hugely successful event there in 2019 and it has recently been announced that Royal Birkdale will be used for the 2026 Open.

St Andrews usually hosts every five years but the average gap between hosting for the other venues tends to be between 8 and 12 years.

Turnberry hasn't held an Open Championship since 2009 and it doesn't have a date penciled in for hosting it in the future.

The Ailsa course last hosted the championship in 2009 when Stewart Cink defeated Tom Watson in a playoff, after the 59-year-old five-time Open champion bogeyed the 72nd hole.

Turnberry is a much better course now than back then thanks to some phenomenal upgrades after the 2015 Women's British Open.

Martin Ebert changed a number of holes including those around the famous lighthouse, with a stunning new par-3 9th playing directly next to it along the rocky coastline. But is Turnberry still on the rota?

Not at present and it doesn't look like the event will return unless circumstances change. In January 2021, R&A Chief Executive Martin Slumbers released the following statement:

“We have no plans to stage any of our championships at Turnberry and will not do so in the foreseeable future. We will not return until we are convinced that the focus will be on the championship, the players and the course itself and we do not believe that is achievable in the current circumstances.”

The 2021 statement represented a change in tone from comments made in 2016 when Slumbers said; "Turnberry was and is, part of the pool of courses for The Open Championship. There are at the moment nine courses, and Turnberry is one of those." This is seemingly no longer the case.

As far as other courses on the rota, Muirfield was briefly taken off in 2016 after the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers voted against allowing female members, but then both Muirfield and the R&A since reversed their decisions. Having said that, Muirfield has not hosted The Open since 2013 and with the championship venues set up to 2026, and with St Andrews likely to welcome the 2027 championship, Muirfield will not see an Open until 2028 at the earliest.