Sean
Re visitor numbers at Open venues, numbers are significantly greater the year before and a few years after an Open is played at a venue therefore in cash terms there is quite a difference however agree that these clubs hardly need the extra revenue to survive, and with it they are prone to spending it in ways that is not needed or detrimental.
Lyne
With reference to the quote from Giles Morgan at HSBC, I suspect the only place they could play the Open under his ideal conditions would be at a municipal that didn't have single sex clubs attached like St Andrew still has. Where ever else you play there will be a degree of segregation, be it due to the club being single sex, or the ladies and mens sections playing their own comps and having their own tee times etc, and then there is the fact that they are private members clubs that limit their membership.
And if as you say playing at such a club marginalises a section of prospective golfers and therefore inhibits the growth of the game, then why is there not a movement to stop playing the other 3 majors (and indeed any other PGA Tour tournament) on exclusive high end country clubs. Why was the movement to get change at Augusta not then focused on having them allow visitors irrespective of their sex, rather than some well healed and high profile woman as members ?
Personally I think the marginalisation argument is bollocks but it's certainly one that a lot of the single sex critics are rallying around.
Niall