In 2029, the Open Championship will return to Carnoustie Golf Links, long announced as one of the most difficult places in the major. The decision, announced on Monday by the R & A, feels like a no-brainer on its surface. Of course, they are back at one of the best golf courses on the planet.
But it came with secondary questions: Why go before Muirfield? Or Turnberry?
As the Open continues to grow in size, popularity and economic importance, decisions like this are never just revisiting an old stage in the event’s wheel. Carnoustie square, this time, is a much deeper conversation.
Most start with who own Carnoustie Golf Links, which has changed since the last time it hosted, in 2018. It was a rollicking summer that year, when Carnoustie was burned to a crisp and where Tiger Woods formally recovers as a major championship contender. Francesco Molinari was your winner during a week where the total attendance reached 172,000. That’s a big number – but also a number that has been beaten well, in repetition, at Opens since.
This year Open at Royal Birkdale counted more than 300,000 patrons in eight days. The first Open, at Royal Portrush, set a record for Opens held away from St. Andrews. And the Open 2022, at the Old in St. Andrews, reached 290,000. He will undoubtedly break that number again next year, when I host again. In other words: a truly massive number of people descend on these small towns, bringing massive economic value with them. Is it good to be in the center of that value, and the county of Carnoustie, Angus, knows well.
But all the way back in 2018, according to the presentation made in recent years by the Council of Angus, investors have hit on the economic prospects of Carnoustie. The Golf Links were run by a charity, who had been doing great work for a long time. It’s a big business – about 130,000 rounds in the last year – but nowhere near the business of, say, the St. Andrews Links Trust just 12 miles south. Carnoustie the city can not provide the same accommodation as St. Andrews, nor the same proximity to the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh, and its international airport. According to a report from The Scotsmanthe Angus Council decided it might be more sustainable to let a different group run their courses.
Max Herberstein led a consortium of investors whose focus was on making Carnoustie – a town of around 11,000 people – a stronger tourist destination via its world-class golf course. They promised that local golfers would maintain affordable access to the courses in the future, and also promised renovations to the hotel and a major investment in the property. This meant not only strengthening the Championship course at Carnoustie links, but also the two other courses (Burnside and Buddon). But his pitch seemed to revolve around the Open, and convincing the R&A to visit Carnoustie consistently – not just for the Men’s Open, but also the Senior Open and the Women’s Open.
Unlike the USGA’s host decisions for the US Open, the R&A announces its future Open sites with much shorter notice. For example, it is not clear where the 2029 Senior and Women’s Open will be held. Just this week it was announced that Carnoustie is regaining the Men’s Open again, less than three years away. The R&A is perpetually in conversation with its rotation of hosts, regularly bringing in course designers for alterations and evaluating the logistics of tiny towns that host hundreds of thousands of visitors. In other words, the R&A, with its quest to make the Open as big as possible, needs periodic reassurance that these centuries-old courses and their surroundings are capable of doing as they never have.
Those calculations are a significant part of why Muirfield and Turnberry – two world-class courses – were passed over for the 2029 Open: both hold their own logistical problems that the R&A leadership has pointed out repeatedly. Muirfield has He was asked to change his ownership to create more space for the massive crowd. Turnberry, on the west coast of Scotland, has been listed as a logistical difficulty for those crowds, who need parking and easy transport to an otherwise quiet part of the country. The two courses have drastically different ownership groups with different agendas than the more recent group involved at Carnoustie, which seemed completely focused on winning the next available Open. It doesn’t take a squint to see the value proposition: if it’s good for business (and for Monterey, California) that Pebble Beach hosts US Opens twice every decade, it should be the same value to its counterparts in the UK.
In 2023, Herberstein’s investment group bought the Carnoustie Golf Hotel for around £10 million. Soon after, a broader vision was presented to the local community. The pitch clarified that without recurring visits from the Open, the local economy would lack its trickle-down effects. There is a lot of elite golf in the country, and if visitors do not make Carnoustie part of their plans, the town will suffer. The positive flip-side of this idea, of course, is that the economic gains to be constantly on the R & A agenda keep golfers from all over the world visiting the area and spending money in Carnoustie. It was made clear by the Carnoustie management that in order to properly host a modern Open and start that positive cycle, the Carnoustie Hotel would have to be renovated, and the Herberstein group pledged their commitment to this. In early 2025, the group officially reached an agreement with Angus Council and the charity that runs the courses to let them take over the daily operations of the golf course for eight years, with the intention of establishing a longer agreement in the future. This company is Carnoustie Golf Heritage and Hospitality Group Limited.
According to business documents filed in the United Kingdom, Herberstein owns about 40% of the company, and a mix of a few dozen other entities make up the rest, including its second director, Paul Lisiak. In a quick token of appreciation, Herberstein, Lisiak and CGHH hosted an event in honor of the Carnoustie caddies, less than two months after receiving them. It was one of the first signs that it wasn’t some distant entity swooping in to take over the books and evict the locals. His proposals to the Council of Angus call for numerous investments in the hotel, the courses and also the surroundings. And about 18 months later, here we are. It won’t be long before the 2029 attendees start making Airbnb reservations.
CGHH has purchased the former Simpson’s Golf Shop across the road from the 18th green at Carnoustie, an iconic and beloved entity that proudly boasts as the second oldest golf shop in the world. Not long after, they released the plans make the shop a historical monument to Robert Simpson, the clubmaker and course designer who worked with Old Tom Morris. In some ways, Simpson’s future matches the moves made around the Old Course in St. Andrews, who developed The Old Course Shop across the road from his 18th green, and the R&A Museum, which is located just past the 18th.
Plans reported for the hotel expansion calls for 25 more rooms and an updated experience focused on luxury. What comes in addition to a £12 million reported recently already spent to acquire and redevelop projects in the area. CGHH bought a local bar and transformed it into a modern and elegant cafe called Maxi’s, which serves as a cocktail bar. It is located quite perfectly between the 18th green and Carnoustie train station, and will have a lot of gravitational pull in July 2029. If you are one of the lucky few (one hundred thousand) visiting that week, just remember:
You were part of the plans all along.
