International golf superstar Rory McIlroy has gone wildly off-script ahead of the Australian Open a with strong appraisal of the Royal Melbourne course.
The Masters champion and five-time major winner is a VIP of the Victorian Labor Government who has reportedly shelved out more than $2 million for him and his entourage to appear in the tournament.
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But on the eve of the open, McIlroy has taken a surprising swipe at the Royal Melbourne course.
“I don’t want the membership to take this badly, but it’s probably not the best course in Melbourne,” he said on Wednesday.
However, he was then quick to butter-up.
World No.2 Rory McIlroy had plenty to say about the Royal Melbourne course ahead of the Open. Credit: AAP “I think, that’s my opinion, but it’s certainly in the top 10 in the world.”
Asked what was the best course in Melbourne, McIlroy had no doubt that the honour belonged to Royal Melbourne’s neighbour Kingston Heath.
McIlroy last competed at the Australian Open in 2015 and won the tournament two years before that in 2013.
Playing on the Melbourne sandbelt was a big lure for him and he has also committed to playing the Open next year … which will in fact be at Kingston Heath.
McIlroy said he had watched tournaments at Royal Melbourne on TV, but didn’t “anticipate how many blind tee shots there were”.
“It sort of takes a little bit to figure out. It’s certainly not straightforward,” he said.
“It probably plays better in a southerly wind rather than a northerly wind.
“I think I’ve played it today. You know, some of the shorter holes are downwind and it plays a little funky.
“And then, if you get the southerly wind and it gets back into the wind, then they play like really good. So it’s probably not a fair reflection on the golf course planet in this wind.
“It would be good to play it in a few other directions. But it’s obviously an amazing golf course and can’t wait to get out there and compete on it this week.”
The 36-year-old credits his thrilling 2013 Australian Open win over Adam Scott at Royal Sydney as a turning point in his career.
“I think about that tournament a lot and about what it meant,” McIlroy said.
“I felt at that point in my career I was at a bit of a crossroads … in 2013 I’d really struggled and I really do think that that win at the end of the year was a catalyst for what happened in 2014, which I’d say, up there with 2025, are the best two years of my career,” he said.
McIlroy felt the tournament deserved a standalone week rather than clash with Tiger Woods’s Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas plus another in South Africa.
He said Australia was “starved” of top-shelf tournaments.
“Australia has been a very big part of my golfing life and my golfing journey, going all the way back to playing the Australian Open as an amateur back in 2005 and 2006.
“I just think the quality of the golf down here, the quality of the players that have come from here.
“You look at an event like LIV (Golf) in Adelaide and the people that come out to that event and how excited they are that some of the top players in the world are down here playing, it just feels like this country is starved of top-level golf.
“A market like this with amazing fans and the history that it does have probably deserves more of a consistency of big players and big tournaments.
“This tournament in particular because of the history, because of the tradition, deserves to be a standalone tournament, a week on its own, and hopefully one day they could put together a schedule where the biggest and best tournaments in the world and the oldest and the ones with the most heritage can be elevated and stand on their own.”
– With AAP