WHEN Tiger Woods collected £720,000 for winning the Open golf championship in Hoylake, he was not the only one celebrating. Merseyside was counting the cash earned during a record breaking Open. Tourism officials today said the real winner of the tournament was the north west, which saw more than £100m investment as golf fans poured in to Wirral. Hoylake's Royal Liverpool Golf Club swung into the record books after hosting 230,000 visitors - the highest number of spectators for an English Open. Businesses across the region raked in hefty profits with spectators spending £8m in the Hoylake area alone. The golfers themselves spent £1.27m in the local area while visiting media spent £4m. Ken Davies, chief executive of Wirral's Chamber of Commerce, said: "We estimated Wirral would see around £80m of investment from tourists and guests. "While we're still in the early stages of counting profits, it looks like we've certainly exceeded that by quite a way. "But there will be hundreds of millions more to come as we hope people will come back to Wirral for a holiday with family and friends. "Apart from all the guests, more than 100 million people saw the championship on the television so this has really put Wirral back on the tourist map." Karen Illingworth, tourism skills and development manager for the Mersey Partnership, said: "A lot of restaurants aretelling me they've made the sorts of profits in one day that they would normally make in a week. "It's been a huge success and even little, out-of-the-way places have seen a massive boost." Nigel Piper, of Lino's restaurant, Hoylake, said: "It's been like Christmas without the snow. We've broken all our records." Tony Darnell, owner of Hoylake's Le Boulevard restaurant, said: "I think we had everyone from the golf in here with the exception of Tiger Woods. It's exceeded all our expectations." Punters got through all this: 400,000 pints of beer, 250,000 cups of tea, 270,000 bottles of mineral water, 98,000 portions of fish and chips, 20,000 rounds of sandwiches, 25,000 punnets of strawberries. 5,000 bottles of champagne. | 
