Teachers and students from local schools operate the hand-operated yellow leaderboards at Royal Birkdale to track golf scores during the Open Championship.
The iconic yellow scoreboards on opposite sides of the 18th green have remained unchanged since 1979. Each board is crewed by eight sixth-form pupils and three teachers who work inside dark wooden towers to update player names and scores by hand.
Charlie Boddington, the deputy headteacher of Cranleigh School in Surrey, has supervised the leaderboard known as 18R for nearly 11 years. Boddington works as an unpaid volunteer who loves the tournament but dislikes the rain when water leaks through the roof.
During the 2015 Open Championship at St Andrews, rain extended play to Monday and flooded the crew's campsite. Former golfer Colin Montgomerie, whose son attended Cranleigh School, invited 10 or 11 team members to stay overnight at his nearby house.
"The Open is wonderful. It’s about tradition, right? And these leaderboards are part of that tradition," Boddington said.
Leaderboard operations and manual scoring errors
Each leaderboard contains two floors connected by an internal wooden ladder. The upstairs crew manages the top six leaderboard positions, while pupils on the lower level handle positions seven through 12 using pre-printed plastic yellow name boards for the 156 golfers in the field.
Crew members must spell out player names by hand on the blindside of the wall for golfers approaching the final hole. Mistakes occur, including a Friday morning incident where the downstairs team spelled the surname of Nicolai Hojgaard with three As before workers in the opposite board alerted them by radio.
Boddington said the team keeps an eye on each other and noted that errors happen frequently during early rounds as workers learn the ropes. He said mistakes usually involve numbers rather than names because workers easily place a six or a nine upside down.
At the 2024 Open at Troon, a worker inserted a nine tile upside down when Xander Schauffele birdied the 16th hole to reach nine under par. Spectators in the 18th grandstand gasped after the board showed a six, believing Schauffele had double-bogeyed before the error was quickly fixed.
"That can cause a panic but you get it corrected quickly," Boddington said.
Scoring central updates and tournament traditions
Students inside the structure receive score updates through an internal radio and a mobile application connected to scoring central. Triple jump world record-holder Jonathan Edwards, who plays to a single-figure golf handicap, works as a member of the scoring central team.
Boddington said students compete to place the name boards of star players on the wall. Crew members previously rushed to post the name of Tiger Woods to hear crowds cheer outside, and they now do the same for Rory McIlroy.
Workers see very little live golf because they view the green through a single small mesh window under the roof. Despite the limited view, staff members consider the yellow boards a key element of the tournament experience.
Carolyn Moir, a physical education teacher at nearby Greenbank High, serves as a supervisor after working at Open tournaments for several years. In 1991, Moir worked as a driver for players and families at Royal Birkdale when Ian Baker-Finch won the championship.
"When Ian won, I drove his wife to their rental home while he was finishing up with whatever he had to do at the course, and she wanted to stop at the local Spar to grab some frozen pizzas and champagne," Moir said. "She then invited me in and I stayed there to celebrate with them, eating frozen pizzas from the Spar."
Moir said she loves working at the tournament and hopes the traditional leaderboards remain in place. While Open merchandising, hospitality areas, and ticket prices have expanded in recent years, the two yellow scoreboards around the 18th green remain unaltered.
