R&A chief aiming for record crowds THE OPEN: Slumbers bullish over Royal Birkdale’s advance ticket sales

The 2017 Open at Royal Birkdale could smash the tournament’s attendance record, with the R&A exceptionally bullish about advance ticket sales.

The record stands at just short of 240,000 for the Millennium Open at St Andrews, but R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers believes they could crack that figure at Royal Birkdale this week given favourable weather and a large number of “walk-up” fans buying tickets at the gates.

This would also buck the recent trend of Open Championships which has seen attendances drop from the peak Tiger Woods years in the early part of the century. In 2013 at Muirfield attendance dropped by more than 20,000, and the total crowd in 2009 at Turnberry was the lowest since 1981.

However, advance tickets sales have been the strongest-ever, according to chief executive Martin Slumbers.

“We are expecting to be in excess of 220,000, which will make it the No 4 all time for the Open Championship,” said Slumbers.

“In fact, we are reasonably confident that we’ll go through the third highest crowd in 2006 at Hoylake, and there is a fighting chance that we might even get close to 2000 at St Andrews.

“I think there are some wonderful players out there now that people want to come and watch, and the game is moving forward. This underpins The Open’s reputation as one of the world’s great sporting events.”

More than 200,000 attended the 2008 championship at the Lancashire venue.