R&A chief not ruling out Saudi support for The Open - but it won't be as title sponsor

The possibility of Saudi Arabian money being pumped into The Open is not being ruled out - but it won’t be through a title sponsorship of golf’s oldest major.

2022 Open champion Cameron Smith and The R&A CEO Martin Slumbers look at the Claret Jug in the build up to the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool. Picture: Tom Russo/The Scotsman

Golf looks set to receive a huge financial boost if a planned commercial merger between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) comes to fruition.

The R&A is not involved in that development, but, with a reported $800 billion in the kitty, it’s conceivable that PIF chief Yasir Al-Rumayyan will also be keen to invest in the majors.

“If I'm very open, we are and do and continue to do, talk to various potential sponsors,” said The R&A CEO Martin Slumbers, speaking in a press conference at Royal Liverpool on the eve of the 151st Open.

“We have a number of large corporate partners that help us make this thing happen. I think the world has changed in the last year. It's not just golf. You're seeing it in football. You're seeing it in F1. You're seeing it in cricket. I'm sure tennis won't be that far behind.

“The world of sport has changed dramatically in the last 12 months, and it is not feasible for the R&A or golf to just ignore what is a societal change on a global basis. We will be considering within all the parameters that we look at all the options that we have.”

However, that won’t include the possibility of Aramco, for example, becoming a title sponsor of the Claret Jug event. “We're not changing from The Open,” added Slumbers.

This week’s event on Merseyside offers a record prize pot of $16.5 million - an 18 per cent increase on the $14.5m on offer in 2022. In the other men’s majors this year, The Masters was played for $18m, the PGA Championship for $17.5m and the US Open for $20m.

On the back of a jump in all those purses over the past few years, The R&A is set to take steps aimed at achieving a “sustainable future for the game”. On that, Slumbers said: “Significant increases in prize money in the men's professional game has resulted in the long-term reassessment of the business model for professional golf.

“As custodians of the game, we have to balance the prize fund at The Open with ensuring the appropriate investment in grass-roots and new golf initiatives, ensuring pathways are in place from elite amateur golf to the professional game, and most importantly, promoting women and girls' golf, both amateur and professional.

“There's no doubt that our ability to achieve this has been impacted by the much more rapid acceleration in men's professional prize money than we had anticipated or planned for.

“These are the stark choices which we, and I'm sure the other leading bodies in golf, are facing, and we have to take a strategic approach that is financially sustainable over the longer term rather than just finding short-term solutions.

“If you want to know what I really care about and what I think is important for the game, it's the financial sustainability of professional golf. It's ensuring that golf is thriving in 50 years' time, but really importantly, that we maintain and do not forget the values around our game.”

As part of a bid to invest £200 million in golf around the world over a ten-year period, a new community-based, family-orientated community called Golf It will open in Glasgow early next month.

“I want to make sure that we leave golf, when I've done my time, in a stronger position than it is. Stronger position for me is more people playing golf. There's a hundred million people now play golf. Never happened before.

“Secondly, 60 million of those are outside the United States. Unless you go back to the 1800s when Scotland was the world of golf, that's never happened before.

“That's a fantastic thing that people need to talk about. Far more. We now have 30 to 35 percent of people who play golf are women. That did not exist 10 years ago.

“Those two things I think are really important, and, for us at the R&A, that's what gets me out of bed in the morning and what pays for it is this championship.”