Blink and you miss it: golf’s major squeeze is hindering game’s growth

The Open marks the end of a stunted, 16-week major championship season that hurts both prestige and popularity

It is perhaps just as well Brian Harman collected the Claret Jug in front of a few hardy souls holding umbrellas, against a light backdrop more akin to November than July and having refused to let excitement get in the way of the final round of the Open Championship. Anybody gripped by an alternative scene would soon have been struck by the harsh realisation that more than 260 days will pass until the next major championship ball is struck in anger.

Jon Rahm was crowned as the Masters champion on 9 April. Harman’s finest hour arrived on 23 July. In between times, Brooks Koepka took delivery of the US PGA Championship and Wyndham Clark won the US Open. If one supposed benefit of this brief major run is to develop a seasonal theme, Hercule Poirot is required to determine it. At face value, nothing links the 2023 majors at all besides desire to get them out of the way as promptly as possible. The delay between final putts dropping at Royal Liverpool and opening drives being struck at Augusta National is great for the Masters, which benefits from fevered anticipation. It surely cannot be regarded as much use to anybody else.