PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — Mark Darbon is relatively new in the job of leading the R&A but he’s quickly had to get up to speed on several fronts, not the least of which concerns future venues for the British Open.
The new CEO who took over from Martin Slumbers in December addressed several topics, many concerning Open sites and the controversial decision as to whether the organization will return to Turnberry—owned by President Donald Trump—anytime soon.
Darbon spoke in advance of the 153rd Open, which begins Thursday at Royal Portrush. Only the next two Opens—2026 at Royal Birkdale and 2027 at the Old Course, St. Andrews—have been awarded.
“I think we’ve been extremely clear on our position in respect of Turnberry,” Darbon said Wednesday. “We love the golf course but we’ve got some big logistical challenges there. You see the scale of their setup here and we’ve got some work to do on the road, rail and accommodation infrastructure around Turnberry.
“We’ve explicitly not taken it out of our pool of venues but we’d need to address those logistical challenges should we return.”
Darbon, 45, was appointed last year and took over for Slumbers, who had a nine-year run in the role.
It was Slumbers who announced in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks at the U.S. Capitol that the R&A would not be returning to Turnberry at any time during Trump’s ownership until it could be assured that the focus “would be on the championship.”
The R&A has maintained that issues related to housing and transportation continue to plague Turnberry, the most scenic of the venues but one that has hosted the championship just four times. The last was in 2009, won by Stewart Cink in a playoff over Tom Watson.
Darbon has backed off of Slumbers’s comments concerning Trump and acknowledged that he has met with Trump’s son, Eric, and other members of their golf team.
“We’ve had good conversations with the ownership and the venue like we do with all of our venues,” Darbon said. “We’ll continue to assess the feasibility and work collaboratively not just with the venue but with local and national government to understand what may be possible and that process at Turnberry is no different to any of our other locations.”
Another location that elicits such curiosity is Murfield, which has not hosted the championship since 2013, when Phil Mickelson won. The 12-year-and-counting absence is the longest since Muirfield first was used as a site in 1892.
“We love the golf course at Muirfield. We’re in a discussion with the venue right now,” Darbon said. “There’s some things that we need to evolve at Muirfield, the practice ground in particular is a challenge for us with a modern Open and there’s some work we need to do with the venue to facilitate some of the infrastructure that we require, some cabling to enable the scale of the production that we have these days. But it’s a good dialogue and we’d love to be back there in the future.”
And then there’s Portmarnock, a popular site outside of Dublin which has never hosted an Open. In fact, should the R&A go there, it would be the first time the championship would be held outside of the United Kingdom.
But the popularity of the Open at Royal Portrush, which is just the third time to be played outside of Great Britain, has given the R&A the confidence to believe the championship would be well received if details can be worked out.
“We are thinking about Portmarnock,” Darbon said. “We think it’s a wonderful links golf course and we’ve been really encouraged by the support that we’ve had in principle from the Irish government to work with us to understand whether we could stage an Open Championship there in the future. We’re knee-deep in feasibility work to help us answer that question fully. We expect to have a clearer picture by the back end of this year.”
That leaves a decision to come on the 2028 venue likely sometime next year, Darbon said. With the Open in England next year and in Scotland in 2027 at St. Andrews, it seems likely to return to Scotland again.
Darbon came to the R&A from a job leading a Premiership Rugby team called the Northampton Saints. Prior to that, he had a big role in staging the 2012 London Olympics.
A 2.9 handicap golfer who despite moving to St. Andrews said he’s had little time for golf, among Darbon’s many duties is now being a member of the board of the Official World Golf Ranking.
Last week, the OWGR announced that it had received an application for accreditation from the LIV Golf League, which has 19 players in the Open field this week.
“We actually had an OWGR board meeting yesterday,” he said. “An application has been received. I think that’s a good thing. There’s a robust process that now exists that the bid will be assessed by the technical committee and then ultimately determined by the board.”
Asked for any insight into what LIV Golf is proposing, Darbon said: “I haven’t reviewed the technical submission in any detail. That’s the process that we’ll go through now so it’s difficult to comment at this stage.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as R&A Boss Says Talks Continue on Taking British Open Back to Turnberry, Out of U.K..