What: Golf: The Open Championship
Where: Turnberry, Scotland
When: July 16-19
Why: The tantalising prospect of a third win in a row for Padraig Harrington in the oldest major of them all should be enough to whet the appetite. Throw in the prospect of a fit again Tiger and the beauty of the Ailsa course at Turnberry on Scotland’s south-west coast, - where Watson and Nicklaus fought out their “duel in the sun” in 1977 and Nick Price won in 1994 - and you have the recipe for a memorable trip.
Package: Best of Scotland Holidays (found through http://www.golfvacations.co.uk/) has a four-night package exclusive of flights but including accommodation, car rental, tickets for all four rounds and a reserved parking pass for €989 per person sharing. The hotels on offer in a standard twin room are either the Holiday Inn Glasgow Theatreland (city centre location, 51 miles from Turnberry) or the slightly closer Holiday Inn East Kilbride.
Getting there: Turnberry is a 30-minute drive on a clear road southwest from Prestwick Airport, and 50 minutes from Glasgow Airport so a flight and car-hire combination is an attractive option.
Flights
From North America: From the New York area, Continental operates direct flights from Newark, while US Airways flies direct from Philadelphia. For all other destinations, you will need a flight through any of the London airports, with BA and Easyjet running shuttles from Gatwick and BA and bmi from Heathrow.
From the rest of Britain: Flights aplenty from London (see above), Birmingham (flybe and bmi baby), Bristol(Easyjet), Cardiff (flybe and bmi baby), East Midlands (bmi baby), Isle of Man (Loganair), Jersey (flybe), Leeds Bradford (bmi) Luton (Easyjet), Manchester (flybe and bmi), Plymouth (Air Southwest), Southampton (flybe) and Stansted (Easyjet).
From Ireland: Aer Lingus flies from Dublin to Glasgow (€68.36 return, leaving Tuesday, July 14, returning Monday, July 20, on aerlingus.com at time of writing) while Aer Arann operates a Monday-Friday service from Cork to Prestwick and Ryanair flies from both Dublin and Shannon to Prestwick.
From Europe: Easyjet has services between Glasgow and Alicante, Berlin Schoenefeld, Copenhagen, Geneva, Malaga and Paris CDG as well as many other Mediterranean destinations. flyglobespan operates a service from Barcelona, while KLM Cityhopper offers flights from Amsterdam.
Getting in:
As with every Open, Championship tickets are available online at http://www.opengolf.com with practice day tickets starting at £10stg and championship day tickets costing £55stg per round.
Where to stay:
As for accommodation, rooms in the Turnberry area and in Ayrshire as a whole will be hard to come by. Our search on http://www.expedia.co.uk/ produced only a handful of rooms, most of them singles (from £60stg per night), in close proximity to the venue, so a daily drive out from Glasgow makes the most sense if searches closer to the course prove fruitless. The local tourism website www.ayrshire-arran.com is also a good source of information.
When in Ayrshire: go and play the links at the par-71 Prestwick Golf Club, the first venue of the Open back in 1860 and imagine Old Tom Morris performing his role as Keeper of the Green, Ball and Club Maker. A single round costs £120stg, £145stg on Sundays (http://www.prestwickgc.co.uk/).
Home from home: The Red Lion Inn in Prestwick was the pub where the idea for The Open Championship was conceived and was used as the clubhouse for its first playing in 1860.
Local brew: The award-winning Arran Brewery is on the nearby island of the same name. Try the Arran Dark, Blonde or Ale.
Event website: http://www.opengolf.com/
Essential book research: To The Linksland by Michael Bamberger – American sportswriter discovers the mystique of the game on various Scottish links.