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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.

In just a few moments today. April 3rd, marks an historic moment in our sport.

The first women amateurs will tee off at Champions Retreat Golf Club in the inaugural Augusta National Womens Amateur. Amongst the first group will be Olivia Mahaffey from Northern Ireland. It is an event of magnitude because on Friday after the 36 hole cut, everyone in the field will play a practice round at Augusta National with the top 30 players competing for the title there on Saturday.

Players have said that Augusta National is so associated with exclusivity and the mens game hosting The Masters that never in their lifetimes did they expect women  to play an event there. It is at huge step forward. Below, leading Australian amateur Julienne Soo talks about the week so far in practice and how well they have been respected.

Surrey based company Ballsportz are offering innovative golf based activities ideal for parties, product launches and school activities. They can be contacted on info@ballsportz.co.uk. Pictures are golf snooker, golf darts and 10 pin golf. All for hybrid sports!

Great to talk to Ladies European Tour player Gabriella Cowley yesterday as she was on her way to play in the Jordan Mixed Open sponsored by Ayla. It is positive to see another co-sanctioned mixed event giving such an opportunity for women professionals to ply their trade. The support of the Challenge Tour and Senior men professionals could really be the way forward.

Here’s the official press release talking about this special event and the official video

Ladies European Tour winner Meghan MacLaren, who created headlines last month when she highlighted golf’s gender pay disparity, former Ryder Cup player Barry Lane and Senior LPGA Champion Trish Johnson are among several other notable players who will tee it up at the spectacular Red Sea venue for the co-sanctioned event.

Three-time European Tour winner and member of the victorious 2002 Ryder Cup squad, Phillip Price, is also in the field for the strokeplay tournament, which will see 40 players from each co-sanctioning tour and a leading amateur from the men’s, ladies’ and over-50s’ games compete over three days on Ayla’s championship course.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity, not only to compete with the female players, but also to test my game against the up-and-coming players on the Challenge Tour,” the Welshman commented. “Playing golf in Jordan and competing against the Ladies European Tour professionals are both new and exciting experiences and it’s going to be really interesting to see how the format works in practice.”

The layout has been specifically set-up to ensure competitors from each circuit can compete over an equal playing field, with bunkering and hazards, alongside tee placement, taken into consideration.

In addition to staging the Jordan Mixed Open presented by Ayla and hosting several legs on the MENA Tour’s ‘Journey to Jordan’, Ayla has earned considerable plaudits for its sustainable design, which Greg Norman described upon the venue’s opening as ‘among the top-three most eco-friendly golf courses in the world, if not the first.’

On a recent visit to arty, trendy Shoreditch in London’s East End I happened upon something special called Junkyard Golf. Thanks to Liv and the staff for giving me a guided tour around one of the fastest growing leisure outlets in the UK. It was impressive how busy it was for a weekday and the complete diversity of people coming in to play. There were a lot of women there. Some on dates, several in hen parties, a family of three generations of women celebrating the youngest member’s 21st birthday. And what was interesting was how engaged they all were with the activity. The security staff were vigilant and present but there wasn’t a hint of rowdiness or drunkenness even though there was a busy bar serving cocktails and mocktails, beers, soft drinks, fast food and snacks.

There were three courses to play of varying difficulty. Shrieks of laughter and chatter but it was lively and buzzy and pleasant. Several large groups of workmates from nearby businesses were sitting talking together waiting for their slot to play and well dressed businessmen from the city of London came in together during their lunch break. It gave them recreation, something to do away from their workplace, devices and social media  in the middle of their working day a time out to refresh their minds and that is a valuable mental health reason. This type of golf can be played quickly and can be fitted into a break in the working day as the venue is right in the heart of many businesses and workplaces. As a night time venue it is very popular as the team work up theme nights, Halloween and Glitter Ball dress up nights were sell outs.The Valentines Night promotion was very popular and Junkyard Golf decided to donate the £30,000 takings to its designated charity Love Support Unite which raises funds for education, health care and skills training in Malawi. All the venues in London, Liverpool, Oxford, Leeds and Manchester also sell popular Mega Love Specs which turn every light into a rainbow filter of love hearts useful again for festivals gigs and parties. Every penny from the sale of this product goes to Love Support Unite.

Apart from being entertainment even skilful golfers have found Junkyard Golf interesting. The best and most effective way to lower your handicap is to improve your putting and Junkyard Golf’s challenges make improving this less boring. The city venues are easily accessible for regular golfers to come in and practice and improve their stroke.

Junkyard Golf was started by two young entrepreneurs as a pop up business and has grown to venues in five cities but has so much potential as a leisure outlet that I think every town should have one. The courses are basically full of old tat such as burnt out cars, auto junk and things from the scrapyard for you to play out of. In London there are four courses which all need creative thinking  – Pablo is a polluted jungle with skulls of failed players and creepy forest animals, Bozo has scary clowns, a hall of mirrors and is a nasty old circus Bruce is about the movies and Gary is about garage it has 90s grunge music playing and a lot of scrapyard items to navigate. The halfway hut of each nine hole course is a photo booth which can send a gif of you posing to your mobile phone.

It’s golf – but not as we know it.

The Jonas Brothers this week released Sucker, their first single in what, five years. What have they been doing all this time? Every picture tells a story. They didn’t want to get changed from the golf course so they could get back to it as soon as the photograph was taken.

Join in the singalong Car Pool Karoke with James Corden and the Brothers here:

Paul Casey became the first man in the tour ament’s 19 year history to have a repeat win in the Valspar Championship at Innisbrook Resort Tampa when he shot -1 72 in the final round to beat Louis Oosthuizen and Jason Kokrak by a stroke. A strong par made from a fairway bunker at the last sealed the win. He said that last year’s win T the Valspar had raised his confidence after eight winless years on the PGA Tour.

”It feels different this year, but not any less cool” he said.

The move of The Players Championship from May back to its original date in March meant a challenging change of conditions in the final round. It was very entertaining to watch for all sorts of reasons. Jim Furyk bidding to become the oldest winner eventually missed a 6 footer and was leader in the clubhouse for some time. Jon Rahm and his caddie appeared to have a disagreement, Dustin Johnson couldnt make a putt under 10 feet, Jason Day played messilyand Tommy Fleetwood who played with some brilliance made an eagle on 16 after hitting his approach to 3 feet and the  hit his ball in the water on 17.

And then there was Rory who was doing his best not to let the frustration of constant runners up finishes get to him. All year he had not been outside the top 6 in every tournament he had competed in. He revealed that he had been figuring the mental side of the game out for himself. It showed. He looked serene and competed with imperious driving and thought his way round the course well. He had four birdies in the final 8 holes and on 16 took the lead playing a 6 iron out of the sand from 180 yards to 14 feet and made the putt. He won by one shot. (3 said

“I needed to show a lot of character out there,” he said. “I think all the experiences I’ve had over the last few weeks in terms of trying to win and not getting over the line definitely helped me today.”

A blistering final round of 64 allowed Francesco Molinari to storm from behind to win the Bay Hill invitational finishing two hours before the final group came into the clubhouse. The final leaderboard had international players taking the top five places with Matthew Fitzpatrick runner up and three players tied on -9 – Tommy Fleetwood, Sun Jae Im and Rafa Cabrera Bello.

It’s Molinari’s fourth worldwide win in 10 months and first since becoming Open Champion. He started the final round five shots back with four birdies on the front nine to be out in 32. Back to back birdies at 12 and 13 were followed with an adventurous 16th hole whee he nearly holed his secind shot for albatross. He ended up making 7 birdies in his bogey free round of -8.

Molinari said: “This is incredible. It’s up there with the best wins I’ve had. Arnold Palmer was a special player but most of all a special person and a global icon for the game. To win here is really, truly special”.

During the first round of the Honda Classic yesterday Rickie Fowler was granted a drop by a rules official and decided to do it a little bit differently, but still under the new knee high version of the Rules of Golf.