I tell you what, The R&A are a funky old lot these days. This week’s AIG Women’s Open at St Andrews, for instance, will be so infused with youthful energy and ‘get down with the kidz’ engagement, this increasingly decrepit correspondent will probably get turned away at the gates and laughed out of the Auld Grey Toun.
I mean, I’m so out of touch with various things, I thought Fleur East was some kind of meteorological term for wind direction that you’d hear on the Shipping Forecast. Fleur East, if you happen to be stuck in medieval times like me, is a singer and she’s going to be performing at the Women’s Open over the weekend. It’s all happening at the Old Course.
The R&A movers and shakers have even unveiled an official dance anthem for the championship which is called Rising Up.
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. The words ‘R&A’ and ‘dance anthem’ did appear in the same sentence. If thump, thump, boom, boom music isn’t your thing, I’ll be perched around the back of the media centre on Saturday plucking out a gentle Renaissance recital on my lute.
According to the promotional bumf, The R&A’s new tune aims to connect with Generation Z while it captures the journey of golfers striving to achieve their goals, highlighted by the recurring lyric, ‘No one can break me when I’m rising up’.
I’d better give it a listen to raise my golfing morale. I’m usually already broken when I’m teeing-up, after all.
Golf and music, of course, often go hand in hand. This scribe’s ceaseless futility with a stick and ba’, for example, could be accompanied by the sombre, heart-wrenching pathos of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.
Who will be top of the hit parade this week remains to be seen, but it promises to be a fine occasion as the best female players in the world gather in the cradle of the game.
It’s now 17 years since the wonderful Lorena Ochoa won what was then known as the Weetabix Women’s British Open at the Old Course. It was the first time a female professional event had been staged on this hallowed stretch of golfing terrain.
In 2007, Ochoa won around $320,500 for her historic conquest. Here in 2024, the champion will waltz off with $1.35 million.
Yes, I know, you’re probably all sick to the back teeth of hearing about money in golf. But the rapid rise in the prize fund of the AIG Women’s Open, particularly over the past four or so years, has underlined the commitment of those in charge of it. The responsibility of elevating this event has been embraced with great gusto.
It’s been a busy old spell of golf in Scotland over the summer. I use the term ‘summer’ loosely, of course. At times, it’s been so dank and wet, I’ve had to winkle a couple of barnacles off my bloomin’ laptop. Now, we’ve got the remnants of a hurricane hurtling in. Visit Scotland? You’d have to be bonkers.
But I digress. We had the Genesis Scottish Open at the Renaissance, The Open at Royal Troon and the Senior Open at Carnoustie in the space of three weeks.
Mercifully, there was a break to draw breath thanks to the Olympics and then we cracked on with the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open last week at Dundonald Links and now we march straight into the AIG Women’s Open. Fatigue can easily kick in. And spectator fatigue can too. Let’s hope that’s not the case this week. The last time Scotland hosted the Women’s Open, at Muirfield in 2022, the total attendance for the whole week was a fairly disappointing 33,000.
Was that down to that aforementioned fatigue? We’d had a similarly hectic run of major events on Scottish soil that year too and when it’s all shoehorned into a few weeks, people simply can’t go to, or indeed afford, everything.
The eye-rolling policy, meanwhile, of pandering to American TV – an issue which also affects the men’s Scottish Open – and having wearyingly late tee-off times at the weekend didn’t do the 2022 Women’s Open any favours either.
The play-off finished in near darkness – they got lucky – and the sight of cursing golf scribblers, with mobile phone torches beaming in the blackness, shuffling back to the media car park once our work was done looked a bit like some sombre, satanic procession of the damned.
We all understand the value of these US tele deals. But Wimbledon wouldn’t shift the time of their showpiece tennis finals to please folk in California. Why should golf?
Anyway, the final group on that closing Sunday in 2022 went off at the frankly ridiculous hour of 3:50pm. Last year at Walton Heath it was a more civilised 2:20pm.
Presumably, it will be much the same at St Andrews this weekend given we are later in the year and the nights are drawing in.
Martin Slumbers, the outgoing chief executive of The R&A, has always said that, “big-time sport needs big-time crowds.”
The AIG Women’s Open has big names, a big prize fund and it goes to big venues. It’s big-time in just about every sense these days. Let’s hope for some big crowds too so the women get the showpiece occasion they deserve.
And on that note, I’m off to tune up my lute.
