Rory McIlroy raised eyebrows when he called Royal Melbourne “not the best course in Melbourne” during the Australian Open. We wanted to know more
Quite apart from the towering tee shots, laser-like approaches, an often-underrated short game and, oh yes, that career Grand Slam, perhaps the most endearing and entertaining aspect of Rory McIlroy’s professional golf career has been the Northern Irishman’s willingness to answer questions with an uncommon honesty.
Not for him the meandering rhetoric favoured by so many of his contemporaries at the sharp end of the game. Instead, with this Belfast boy, you get what he actually thinks, which may or may not correspond with what you expect to hear.
So it was that the five-time major champion dropped something of a bomb during his press conference prior to December’s Australian Open: “I don’t want the membership to take this badly, but Royal Melbourne is probably not the best course in Melbourne.”
Such a view is far from the norm in the Victorian capital and inevitably caused a bit of a fuss. Especially when McIlroy doubled down and identified nearby Kingston Heath as the best course in the city. “That’s my opinion,” was his straight-to-the-point verdict.
Anyway, exactly seven weeks on from the public unveiling of those controversial thoughts, McIlroy sat down in the locker room at the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai to exclusively provide Australian Golf Digest with further context.
“I look at courses through a tournament player’s lens, not through an architecture lens or even a historian’s lens,” he explained. “My thing is always, ‘Does the course challenge every club in my bag and every aspect of my game?’ I’m not sure many courses do that, to be fair. But there are some. Plus, the game has evolved. If you are talking about a venue for a big tournament you have to design the course with that in mind. I’d love to play where every club in the bag is required. But Royal Melbourne is not that course. Has technology passed it by? Maybe. At least to an extent.
“The game of golf asks a lot of different questions when it comes to skill-sets,” he continued. “One of them is driving the ball, which is something I do very well. So, again, I am inevitably going to see courses through that particular lens. Which is why the thing I like most about Kingston Heath is that the holes are pretty much straight in front of me.”
OK, let’s talk specifics. What exactly turned him off at Royal Melbourne?
“There was a lot of blind tee shots, a lot of tee shots where I was hitting across fairways,” he responded. “I thought tee-to-green it wasn’t amazing. The green complexes are brilliant, though. And the bunkering around the greens is incredible. They could be the best green complexes in the world. But a truly great course needs more than that, especially when you are hosting some of the best players in the world. I also felt like many of the areas off the fairways were a bit scruffy. I like a rustic quality in some ways, but aesthetically it doesn’t look great. That’s one of the aspects I like about any course. I love Augusta National for that reason, although I realise not every course can be that way.”
So, living up to his well-earned reputation for veracity, there was no sign of McIlroy backing off. Which is not to say his overall message is devoid of any conciliatory tone.
“Maybe I built Royal Melbourne up in my mind too much,” he concluded with a smile. “And yes, it was good, if a little too quirky off the tee for me. In a way, I was speaking to the overall quality of the courses in Melbourne. It’s a great problem to have if I am saying that Royal Melbourne is the second-best course in the city. There is an embarrassment of riches down there. Plus, I didn’t feel like I was too insulting to my hosts. I did say the Composite course was still top-10 in the world – just not top-one in Melbourne.”
Photograph by getty images/josh chadwick