The R&A have announced today that they will be putting more tickets on sale for The Open Championship at Royal Portrush from April 15th. Tickets for the Championship days July 18-21 sold out completely soon after they became available last year. They will be made available via The One Club, at 10am on Monday 15 April please see TheOpen.com/Tickets.

John McGrillen, Chief Executive of Tourism NI, said, “We very much welcome this announcement and it is evident from the Championship’s record-breaking sell-out of tickets to date that there is great excitement for its return to Northern Ireland for the first time in almost 70 years.

“This increase in capacity will give even more people an opportunity to visit our shores and with tens of thousands of spectators and visitors from across the world expected to be in attendance, it is shaping up to be the biggest event ever held here

“We’re working with our partners at The R&A, the Council and many other agencies, to deliver a fantastic event in July and we can’t wait to show our local, national and international visitors the best of NI and the legacy it will leave for golf, sport and tourism here.”

Well this is what happened. I checked in to the ticket sales website before 10am and it said sorry – page unavailable.  On the dot of 10 every time I tried to get in I got an error message

I don’t believe that it will be temporarily unavailable, I cant see it being up and running again soon. It seems they just want people to give up and go away so they dont have a problem. The R&A get a lot of their revenue from corporate ticket sales, but is that really in the best interests of growing the game when there are thousands of passionate people wanting to go but they cant because the R&A have limited the number of tickets? Weve always been able to turn up and buy on the gate throughout the history of the championship the all advance ticket scheme is backfiring and making a lot of spectators disappointed and unhappy.