R&A not opposed to PGA’s May move

The R&A has no objections to proposed changes to the professional golf schedule that would see the Open become the year’s final major and the PGA Championship move to a new May date.

Speaking to bunkered.co.uk in St Andrews this morning, the organisation’s chief executive Martin Slumbers revealed that the R&A has been involved in discussions about the schedule changes and that it has no objections to them.

“There has been very good communication [about the proposed changes] and wee have been kept informed as appropriate,” said Slumbers. “It’s not really something that I think is either a positive or a negative for the Open Championship If it ends up being the last major of the year, that’s fine. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter.

“I think it’s really important that the four majors are just truly outstanding platforms for our game and, from our point of view, we are focused on just getting the Open right.”

Slumbers also added that he is not concerned about the possibility of the major season becoming even more condensed than it is.

“One of the big upsides of getting into the Olympics is that, every four years, we have that to look forward to after the Open,” he said. “There is an awful lot of good golf for fans to enjoy and our job is to make sure that as many of them do so as possible.

In a wide-ranging interview, Slumbers added that Turnberry, above, ‘absolutely’ remains one of the ten courses on the Open rota but refused to be drawn on when the championship might return there. 

“We’ve announced out to 2020 and Royal St George’s and at the end of this year or beginning of this year we will announce where 2021 will be,” he said. “Turnberry was not part of those discussions but it is one of our ten courses. The work that has been to redesign the golf course has created an outstanding golf course and, when we get round to thinking about 2022, we will start from the base level with all of ten courses under consideration.

“We have a natural rhythm to selecting courses and we’ll worry about 2021 and 2022 later this year and next year.”