The Open 2022: St Andrews work to begin, ticket ballot, DeChambeau course test - Johnnie Cole-Hamilton speaks on 150th event

He’s come a long way since learning the ropes in golf as a wet-behind-the-ears tournament controller with the PGA in Scotland. “Yes,” said a smiling Johnnie Cole-Hamilton, “if someone had tapped me on the shoulder when I was doing the Clydebank & District Pro Am and said that one day you’d be in charge of the staging of the 150th anniversary of The Open, I wouldn’t have believed them.”

As The R&A’s Executive Director - Championships, that is, indeed, Cole-Hamilton’s current main task, with the countdown to this summer’s keenly-anticipated milestone occasion in St Andrews set to crank up a gear on Monday as work starts to build the contractors’ compound. From then until July, it will be all systems go.

“We probably start planning for most Opens four or five years out,” said Cole-Hamilton, who has managed the team responsible for delivering the game’s oldest major since 2012 but has been on The R&A staff for 23 years in total. “When we last had The Open here in 2015, we would have been thinking about the 150th even then and what we could see on the ground.

“The main challenge in St Andrews is that it’s got the town right at the top of it, which is great in so many ways. To have the greatest walk in golf with all those flats and hotels just 10 paces from the fairway is just incredible and we are so delighted that’s the case.

“But it can also provide a challenge. Spectating is difficult because we’ve got no spectator movement in between the holes with the Old Course basically being on a loop with the crowd going on the outside at all times. We have to manage some big numbers on the outside and give spectators the best experience we can.

“But St Andrews is so steeped in the game that we will overcome any challenge and it will