Qualifying Venues Confirmed For The Senior Open

Fairmont St. Andrews Golf Peninsula

Fairmont St. Andrews Golf Peninsula (Photo/Fairmont St. Andrews)

The R&A and the European Senior Tour have announced that Fairmont St Andrews, Ladybank, Lundin Links, and Scotscraig will be the four qualifying venues for the 2018 Senior Open Presented by Rolex.

Each venue will host an 18-hole qualifying competition on Monday 23 July and around 400 golfers are anticipated to enter in an attempt to earn a starting place in the championship.

Experienced Qualifying Venues

Fairmont St Andrews, along with Ladybank and Scotscraig, has hosted Final Qualifying for The Open. It was the first time the Torrance course at Fairmont had been used for that purpose, but is well-known on the Senior Tour as the venue for the Scottish Senior Open between 2009 and 2014.

Ladybank has been a constant feature on The Open qualifying rota since 1978 and on six occasions subsequently. Lundin Links, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2018, has hosted Final Qualifying six times between 1978 and 2005 with Scotscraig staging that event on six occasions between 1984 and 2010.

Old Course Set To Stage For The First Time

The world-famous Old Course in St Andrews is set to host the championship for the first time, creating a golden opportunity for the legends of the game to re-live past glories, or avenge near misses and disappointments over the world’s most famous golfing location, the Home of Golf.

Defending the title will be the remarkable Bernhard Langer, who won at Royal Porthcawl in tremendous style last month and is now exempt for a wonderful ‘double-header’ in Scotland:  The 147th Open at Carnoustie from 16-22 July and the Senior Open at St Andrews from 26-29 July.

Langer Bidding For fourth Senior Open

Langer, who joined Gary Player and Tom Watson as the only three-time winners of the Senior Open Championship Presented by Rolex at Royal Porthcawl last month, said: “I am looking forward to two very special weeks in Scotland next July. Firstly, I can play another Open Championship at Carnoustie, a links that I love and where I won by my Senior Open in 2010.

“Then I can look forward to spending a week in St Andrews to defend my latest Senior Open title. It’s one of my most favourite places and a fantastic place to play golf with all the tradition and history attached to it.”

Information about ticket registration for the 2018 Senior Open Championship Presented by Rolex will be available via http://www.senioropenchampionship.com/ in due course.