This week’s British Open was already sold out for the first time in its 148-year history when, late last year, organizers began to ask the next logical question: Could they fit even more people?
By Brian Costa July 16, 2019 7:04 am ET PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland—
The tournament is being held outside Scotland and England for only the second time ever and the first time since 1951, when an Englishman named Max Faulkner won the Claret Jug at Portrush. Its return to this golf-mad island is being met with a mass pilgrimage to the northern coast. For organizers, this Open represents a feat of logistics. All of the grandstands, scoreboards, video boards, hospitality tents and the like had to be ferried in more than 2,000 containers across the Irish Sea. Many of them were routed through Dublin, a plan that nearly fell into disarray in March as Britain faced the prospect of exiting the European Union without a deal. The deadline for an agreement has since been extended to Oct. 31, delaying any potential effect on the Irish border.
The tournament uses a rotation of what is now 10 courses, many of them with storied histories. Portrush, the town and the course, had never seen anything like a modern major championship. “It was very much a dream,” Erskine said. “We didn’t even think that could ever be possible.”
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