{"id":324127,"date":"2025-12-03T03:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T03:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/324127\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T03:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T03:22:08","slug":"rory-mcilroy-says-royal-melbourne-golf-club-isnt-the-best-course-in-melbourne-ahead-of-2025-australian-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/324127\/","title":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy says Royal Melbourne Golf Club isn\u2019t the best course in Melbourne ahead of 2025 Australian Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It hasn\u2019t taken long for Rory McIlroy to cause a stir at the Australian Open, even before he hits his first tee shot.<\/p>\n<p>The Northern Irish superstar wasn\u2019t overly enthusiastic when asked about the quality of Royal Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Rory McIlroy speaking on Wednesday.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/8ad214e547d06d585b49d3e8b2dd3fa8356ee088.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Rory McIlroy speaking on Wednesday.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want the membership to take this badly \u2026 it\u2019s probably not the best course in Melbourne,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The comment, which was less than two minutes into his only press conference before the tournament, caused journalists and tournament officials to stop momentarily and look around the room in shock.<\/p>\n<p>His next sentence repaired some of the damage.<\/p>\n<p>Loading<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s my opinion, but it\u2019s certainly in the top 10 in the world. There\u2019s so much great golf in this country, especially in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McIlroy, who hadn\u2019t been to Royal Melbourne before Monday, had just walked off the course following his pro-am round, and said he was surprised by certain elements of the lay-out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t anticipate how many blind tee shots there was going to be. Yeah, it sort of takes a little bit to figure out. It\u2019s certainly not straight-forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It hasn\u2019t taken long for Rory McIlroy to cause a stir at the Australian Open, even before he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-324127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}