Keep it here! The North West is best

DOES The Open really have to be staged at Carnoustie next year? Is it too late to have a change of heart and switch it to Royal Liverpool or Royal Lytham & St Annes? Only joking, of course, but here’s a serious point. After a run of Opens in Scotland where the atmosphere has been a pale shadow of those taking place in England, it really is time for Carnoustie to raise its game. It was probably at Carnoustie last time in 2007 where the rot set in. Hoylake had returned to The Open rota the previous year and we had enjoyed a carnival. The following year the action was certainly dramatic enough but where was the colour and the flavour? Two years later The Open returned to Scotland at Turnberry and just 118,000 people turned up for the week. Since then, the Opens taking place in England and Scotland have continued to go their separate ways. When it takes place in England, record crowds turn up, such as the 235,000 who passed through the gates at Birkdale. When it takes place in Scotland we get a litany of excuses for the poor attendance. My favourite was the R&A blaming the warm sunshine for the fact the numbers were down at Muirfield in 2013. No one would obviously question the quality of the courses in Scotland but, as the R&A’s chief executive Martin Slumbers said last week, it’s the people who attend that make The Open so special, and there surely have to be consequences if they continue not to turn up north of the border. Right now, it is startlingly obvious The Open is a good deal more special when it takes place in the North West of England than anywhere in Scotland outside St Andrews.