Merseyside’s Royal Birkdale will host the 154th Open this summer, with Championship play beginning on Thursday 16th July running until Sunday the 19th.
Alongside hosting its 11th Open the course has held numerous other golfing championships such as The Walker Cup, The Curtis Cup, Ryder Cup and the Women’s British Open.
Southport is well known for its golfing history with the first Championship being held there in 1954, with Royal Birkdale hosting the competition the second most in history, only behind St Andrew’s, Scotland.
The town will host hundreds of thousands of visitors when the Open takes place in the summer, with the previous hosting of The Open at Royal Birkdale surpassing more than 235,000 people in 2017.
This attendance was the highest for a Championship in the UK, outside of St Andrew’s.
With the huge crowds the whole of Southport will undergo changes for the few days that the competition is held with tourists from far and wide travelling to visit the spectacle.
Small businesses around Southport will hope to take advantage of the influx of visitors to the Merseyside town, alongside Golf clubs who usually see an increase of customers not just during the time of the event but also in the weeks and months surrounding it.
Residents of Southport and nearing towns seem to get infected with a form of “Golf fever” as involvement spikes during the time of major tournaments.
Charlotte Pilkington, Golf Coordinator of Southport & Ainsdale Golf Club and Andrew Kenyon, General Manager of Southport Old Links Golf Club both spoke around the influence that major competitions have upon their own clubs alongside the seaside town itself.
