Open ticket prices kept at £75 for 2014

THE full daily ticket price for next year’s Open Championship has been kept at £75 despite that cost contributing to poor attendances at Muirfield in July.

Phil Mickelson celebrates winning last year's Open - but 18,000 fewer watched him than saw Ernie Els win in 2002. Picture: Jane Barlow

Details of the pricing for the event at Royal Liverpool have been posted on its official website, theopen.com, in the shadow of a positive announcement regarding the qualifying system for the world’s oldest major.

If bought before 31 May next year, a daily ticket for the four days of the championship (17-20 July) on the Wirral costs £65, but that rises by £10 thereafter.

For practice days, the dearest ticket is the full Wednesday price of £40. A season-ticket bought after the cut-off for the early bird offer is £240.

Raising ticket prices by £5 from Lytham the previous year £15 more than Sandwich in 2011 – for this year’s event coincided with almost 18,000 fewer people watching Phil Mickelson win at Muirfield than saw Ernie Els 
triumph in East Lothian in 2002.

Attendance figures were down for all four championship days as a total of 142,036 entered the gates compared to 160,595 11 years ago. The R&A countered claims ticket pricing was behind the drop, saying a heatwave had been the reason for the event failing to hit its projected target of 170,000.

“More than 142,000 people attended the Open,” said a spokesman at the time. “That is almost 90 per cent of the figure in 2002 and we are pleased with this attendance. Advance ticket sales were very strong and we believe the warm weather put off some of our pay-at-the-gate customers.

“That is perhaps why, unusually, we had a higher attendance on Sunday in cooler weather than we did on Friday, which is normally the busiest day.”