Best seat in the house: Inside The Open’s iconic yellow leaderboard

“Welcome to the box,” beams Charlie Boddington.

The assistant headmaster at Cranleigh, Surrey’s leading co-educational independent school, Charlie has swapped the whiteboard for the scoreboard this week, supervising the operation of one of The Open’s most iconic features.

The yellow leaderboards, perched high above the grandstands that frame the 18th hole, have become almost synonymous with golf’s oldest championship since they were first deployed in the early 1970s.

From Jack to Seve, Tiger to Phil, Rory to Sir Nick, the names of some of the greatest players ever to pick up a club have been writ large on these scoreboards, with every golfer in the field this week hoping that it will be their turn to receive the customary congratulatory message on Sunday night.

“Well played [Insert ‘Champion Golfer of the Year’s’ name here]. See you at Royal Portrush next year.”

The Cranleigh school has kept score around the 18th hole for the last 30 years, with Boddington at the helm for the last ten.

“I absolutely love my golf,” he explains, “so when the chance to do this opened up ten years ago, I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’ Fortunately, my wife was understanding enough to say, ‘Okay, for the next nine years, you can crack on and do that.’”

A disarmingly gregarious character, Boddington has an infectious passion for the part he plays in Open week.

“It’s an amazing experience to be part of what is the biggest sporting event in the country,” he smiles. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s just a small part, but it’s a visual and important part. It’s a real privilege to be involved.”

Beyond its colourful facade, the leaderboard is split across two floors and has two different parts. The first of those is the ‘Hole Approach’ part which displays the names and scores of the players either approaching or on the 18th green. The second is the leaderboard, which has room for 12 names. The top-six are updated from the upper floor, the next six from the bottom floor.

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“It can get pretty quiet upstairs when somebody has a big lead or the afternoon wave isn’t really making a charge,” says Boddington.

As we talk, a voice from the far end of the box, peering out of a perspex window towards the 18th tee, shouts ‘Hole change!’ and, suddenly, everybody gets quickly to work. Bold letters printed on yellow plastic are snatched from makeshift shelves, with colourful numbers plucked from the floor.

The updates are carried out, in the main, by a team of schoolchildren who work on a shift pattern. Each shift comprises six or seven sixth-form pupils, aged between 17 and 18, with two staff supervising.

Until a couple of years ago, volunteers from Cranleigh School alone assumed responsibility for the leaderboards. “Wisely, though, the R&A decided to adopt more of a ‘local schools’ model,” explains Boddington. “So, wherever The Open tees it up, they ask some local schools to come and run the boxes, with us coming back each time to train and support them.

“This way, a different group of kids each year gets to experience doing it and being part of The Open, which is what it’s all about really.”

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This year, the hard graft is being done by pupils from the nearby Wellington School.

“I have to say, they’ve been fabulous,” adds Boddington. “It’s taken less than a day for them to learn how it’s done, so, for the most part, we’re just standing back and letting them get on with it.”

The speed with which the kids carry out their responsibilities has shades of the ball boys and girls at Wimbledon about it.

But being fast is just one part of it.

“They have to be quick, they have to be organised, and they have to be accurate,” says Boddington. “It sounds obvious but they need to be able to spell and have a keen eye for detail. ‘McIlroy’, for example, has to be spelt with a small ‘C’, things like that.

“Then there are sixes and nines. If you get them upside down and use the wrong one – which is very easily done – the numbers will misalign on the scoreboard. From inside the scoreboard, you’d never know. But from the outside, it just won’t look as good.

“Making sure the ‘S’s are the right way around, that’s another one. It’s those little details they really need to be on the ball about.”

It helps that there’s a little bit of friendly rivalry to keep everybody on their toes.

“Yes, you’ve probably noticed there’s an identical leaderboard on the other side of the hole,” laughs Charlie. “We’re 18L – so ‘left’ of the leaderboard as you come up the fairway – and they’re 18R. We communicate with each other via radio to ensure that, when we get an update from Score Control, which is in charge of all scoring for the whole course, we try to synchronise our scoreboard updates.

“There’s a lot of eyeballs on us, and TV cameras for that matter, so we’ve got to look as slick as we possibly can. But if we can get our leaderboard updated a split-second before they do, well, that’s always nice.”

There’s an elephant in the room, of course, and its name is digital.

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In this day and age of cutting-edge technology and elaborate televisuals, it’s perhaps a little surprising that the R&A has resisted replacing the manual operation of the yellow leaderboards with a digitised display.

“Yeah, there was a little bit of chatter about that four or five years ago,” nods Boddington. “But, thankfully, nothing recently. I think they like that there’s a traditional feel about it. It’s quite charming, really.

“And I know for a fact that they love getting the kids involved, too. A lot of them are really into their golf when they come to us. Others aren’t but, by the time they leave, they absolutely love it. It’s wonderful to see how excited they get by it all. It’s a long week, sure. But’s a great week.”

And, much like the customary salute to the recipient of the Claret Jug, the scoreboard operators have created their own little Sunday night tradition to put a full-stop on the week.

“We always try to make sure we finish with a team photo down on the 18th green, with the scoreboard behind us,” smiles Boddington. “The R&A are really good to us. They look after us really well and, honestly, it’s just such a privilege to be involved.

“Long may it continue.”

Michael McEwan is bunkered's Head of Content and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Head of Content