Australian golf fans love Rory McIlroy but the Irishman doesn’t appear to love Royal Melbourne with the global superstar saying the famous course isn’t even the best in the city.
The world No.2 was swamped by a large crowd during the pro-am in a sign of things to come this weekend, with the Australian Open general public tickets sold out for the first time in years.
McIlroy will tee off in the opening round on Thursday with Australian great Adam Scott, whom he famously beat for the title in 2013, and another drawcard Min Woo Lee.
The game’s newest grand slam winner praised the tournament’s return from dual gender to its traditional format and its location on the Victorian sandbelt.
But McIlroy, who played five holes at five different Melbourne courses on Monday, wasn’t overly enthusiastic about Royal Melbourne, rating nearby Kingston Heath above it.
“I don’t want the membership to take this badly but it’s probably not the best course in Melbourne,” said McIlroy, who won the Masters this year to become just the sixth man to achieve the career grand slam.
He did at least add the course was still in the top 10 in the world and said it possibly played “funky” on Wednesday due to the northerly wind.
“I didn’t anticipate how many blind tee shots there was going to be, and it takes a little bit to figure out, it’s certainly not straightforward.
“I think as well, it probably plays better in the southerly wind rather than a northerly wind … it’s probably not a fair reflection on the golf course playing it in this wind.
“It would be good to play it in a few other directions, but it’s obviously an amazing golf course and I can’t wait to get out there and compete on it this week.”
The 36-year-old, who last played in the Australian Open in 2015, often credits his thrilling win over Scott at Royal Sydney two years earlier 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 121-year-old 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.”
The star trio tee off at 7.05am AEDT followed by Cameron Smith, who is playing alongside fellow Australian Elvis Smylie and 2016 Masters champion Danny Willett.
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