‘Cruel and wrong!’ Gary Player hits out over Turnberry Open snub

Gary Player has urged Open officials to stop being “unfair and cruel” and restore Turnberry back onto the Championship rota. 

The 88-year-old icon remains adamant that golf’s oldest major should return to the Ayrshire resort, which is owned by the former US president Donald Trump. Turnberry was struck from the R&A’s list of venues in January 2021, days after the US Capitol riots in which Trump was widely implicated.

And despite growing calls to bring the Open back to Turnberry’s acclaimed Ailsa course, the governing body has shown zero willingness to change its stance.

Ahead of last year’s Open at Royal Liverpool, outgoing R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers reiterated that “until we’re confident that any coverage at Turnberry would be about golf, about the golf course and about the championship, we will not return any of our championships there”.

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Trump purchased Turnberry in 2014, five years after the venue last hosted The Open, yet the prospects of the tournament returning to one of his prized properties on Scotland’s west coast still appear remote at best.

That’s despite the club’s new general manager Nic Oldham going public earlier this month with his plea to invite Turnberry back into the fold, while planning applications to redesign parts of the Ailsa course have also been lodged in a bid to strengthen its case.

And Player – who won The Open three times across his garlanded career – is convinced that the R&A are making a grave error by continuing to snub the famed resort.

“It must come back,” Player told bunkered at Lustica Bay in Montenegro, his latest golf course design and the country’s first 18-hole layout. “Fairness in life. Some might say Donald Trump did… what about every other President? They all did something wrong. Not only Donald Trump.

“Every one of them. It says in the Bible: Forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.

“It’s wrong and its cruel and its unfair not to have The Open go back to Turnberry because its the best golf course. That and Carnoustie. Carnoustie and Trump Turnberry are the two best golf courses in Scotland.”

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At the White House in 2021, Trump awarded nine-time major champion Player a Presidential Medal of Freedom – considered the highest civilian honour in the United States – during a ceremony that took place as scheduled a day after a mob of his supporters had stormed Congress.

The pair have built a close relationship over the years and Player has previously rated Trump’s four-time Open venue behind only Pine Valley in New Jersey as his second favourite golf course in the world.

“I walked into Trump Turnberry the other day – by the way, he’s made great investments in Scotland,” Player added. “I play golf with him almost every three weeks. He’s a very nice man and the stuff I read about him I can’t believe. I read about the opposition saying ‘he’s going to ruin democracy’. He’s going to improve our democracy, not ruin it.”

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.