Potential Brexit and Irish border-related difficulties with the staging of the 2019 Open at Royal Portrush have been highlighted by the Chief Executive of the R&A.
Martin Slumbers, Chief Executive of the R&A, the organizing body of the Open, has qualified the comments he made on Tuesday regarding “significant concerns” about the impact of Brexit on staging this year’s event in Northern Ireland.
The Open will be hosted by Royal Portrush Golf Club July 18th-21st and when speaking to the British media on Tuesday of this week Slumbers revealed Britain’s current Brexit stalemate was causing logistical concerns.
“Like every business, and I think about the Open as such, the lack of certainty about the laws under which we are operating under post-March 29th has caused us significant concerns,” Slumbers said.
“In hindsight would I be wanting to do Portrush in the year that we would be potentially leaving the European Union without a deal? No.
“As a management team we have spent a lot of time looking at contingencies and what we need to do. The future of the border is the number one concern. We have over 2,000 containers (from as far afield as the Middle East) to get across the Irish Sea and we start building (grandstands and the tented village) on April 2nd.
“The problem is that we don’t know whether to reschedule to bring our containers through Dublin, whether to move them through Belfast or whether to ship them out of the UK now.”
This year will be the first time the tournament will have been played in Ireland since it was last at Royal Portrush in 1951.
At a recent Gala Dinner to celebrate the return of the event to the country, BBC Northern Ireland sports presenter Stephen Watson revealed that he had been told in the early 1990s that political tension made Portrush’s restoration to the Open rota impossible; he celebrated how 20 years of change had transformed that situation and yet now a different political problem has emerged, but Slumbers was keen to stress that Brexit is a difficulty rather than direct risk.
“It doesn’t threaten the staging, we will make it happen,” he insisted. “It’s just more complex than we anticipated. For insiders it’s harder but for everyone outside it won’t impact at all, they won’t notice.
“We are fully sold out for the championship days and 70 percent of the spectators are Irish. I think it will be very noisy and exciting.
“We are determined to put on the best Open as we possibly can.
