A short history of 2013 Australian Open champion Rory McIlroy’s affinity for our country, which began when a skinny, 16-year-old amateur hopped on a plane from Northern Ireland to Victoria in 2005.
There’s a great story from the 2005 Australian summer of golf that involves a skinny, afro-sporting Northern Irish teen golfer named Rory McIlroy, another eventual world No.1 in Jason Day, one of horse racing’s greatest ever jockeys, Damien Oliver, and Jason Louey, a former jockey-turned trainee pro golfer who scraped through final qualifying for that year’s Australian Open at Moonah Links. Somehow, this motley crew were all linked in one true blue Aussie golf yarn.
It was November 2005, almost 20 years before McIlroy won the Masters at Augusta National to complete the career Grand Slam of all four majors. Back then, Louey had given up riding horses to pursue an obvious golf talent via a traineeship at Royal Melbourne Golf Club.
Louey teed up in final qualifying for the 2005 Australian Open and, while he didn’t automatically qualify, he battled through an eight-man playoff for the first alternate spot at Moonah Links. He was allowed to practise on site and had a good chance of an Open competitor pulling out, so Louey drove to the Mornington Peninsula. He was practising in a bunker near the range at Moonah Links, trying to correct some recent issues in the sand.
“In the bunker next to me was this super-skinny kid with an afro hitting bunker shots,” Louey tells Australian Golf Digest about his first glimpse of McIlroy. “His hands were whipping through the sand, and these balls were coming out so high and soft with so much spin. I tried to mimic what he was doing. Not only was I incapable of doing that, but I thinned two bunker shots that rocketed at a speed of probably 120 miles an hour over the chipping area and flew right in between Jason Day and [his coach] Colin Swatton.”
A day after almost injuring a future major winner, Louey teed up in a practice round with two more: Geoff Ogilvy and Adam Scott. Hours later, Louey’s phone pinged with a text from the PGA of Australia: he had progressed from first alternate to a confirmed spot in the Australian Open. He was grouped for the first two rounds with, as fate would have it, McIlroy, and New Zealand pro Alastair Sidford.
Louey’s first call after receiving the good news?
“Straight to a mate of mine, Damien Oliver,” Louey recalls about phoning the winner of the 1995, 2002 and 2013 Melbourne Cup, the 1997 and 2001 Cox Plate and the 2007 Golden Slipper. “‘Oli’ always wanted to caddie in a professional tournament because he was a keen golfer and because he’s a good friend of Matthew ‘Bussy’ Tritton (an Australian and veteran PGA Tour caddie who has looped for Scott, Ogilvy and Peter Lonard).”
Newspapers and photographers were all over the story. Oliver and Louey, though, knew what the real revelation was – there was a kid at Moonah Links with generational talent.
“[Louey] played a practice round with Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy and then with Rory in the tournament and you could see, at 16, he was swinging it like [Scott and Ogilvy] were,” Oliver recounted to Australian Golf Digest.
Louey struck a beautiful tee shot on Thursday at the par-4 opener at Moonah Links’ Open course and flushed his approach to a foot for birdie. McIlroy made bogey. “I was confident, and I remember feeling sorry for this kid. He was 16, playing a national open on a tough course in tough conditions,” Louey recalls.
The next two holes quite literally changed the trajectory of Louey’s career. “The drive on the par-5 second needed a 265-metre carry over a bunker, into the wind, which made it essentially a 280-metre carry,” he recalls. “I had to lay up short with a 3-wood. Rory pulled out a driver and smashed it over the pot.”
Moments later, Louey and Oliver were stunned. “Rory then hit a driver off the deck and reached the par 5 in two, while ‘Jase’ hit 3-wood, 3-wood, 9-iron,” Oliver recalls. “There was an undeniable X-factor. He was long, but there was also amazing touch around the greens.”
The par-4 third demanded a 240-metre carry to reach the top of a shelf in the fairway, so Louey blasted a driver, but his ball rolled backwards down the slope. McIlroy effortlessly smoothed a 3-wood over the shelf and hit a sand wedge to the green. Louey was deflated. McIlroy shot 73 to Louey’s 78, and the Ulsterman followed it with a 79 to miss the cut by one shot. But Louey saw everything he needed from McIlroy, and from himself.
“I’m grateful I got to see that up front because I probably gave up on playing professional golf,” Louey says.
Because of McIlroy?
“Because of that entire week; it made me retire from [the tour pro dream],” he says. “I’d won a state trainee championship; I was leading the trainee order of merit. I was on track to thinking I was going to be a tour player. Rory, Adam and Geoff, who would win the US Open the next year, were 60 metres past me off the tee. Rory was a skinny kid with [teenage] acne and an afro, and flew drivers past me. In hindsight, I’m grateful to have had an incredible experience playing with him, but I knew pretty quickly, If I can’t compete with a 16-year-old kid, what am I doing trying to make a living here?”
Louey went on to become an equipment fitter on tour and then opened Sims Fore Golf, a family-run golf simulator business. “I continued working as a club pro, but what excited me was clubfitting and I ended up with TaylorMade being a clubfitter on the US tour for a brief period,” Louey says. “I’ve always been happy for Rory. Although we don’t know each other, it was very cool to be there at the start of his journey.”
It may come as a surprise that McIlroy’s Australian Open journey began with teeing it up in final qualifying for that edition at Moonah Links. He owns 29 PGA Tour wins, 12 DP World Tour titles and nine victories across seven national opens, yet there was a time when he needed to line up among other amateurs, young pros and journeymen who had lost direct exemptions.
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As it happened, another Australian golfer had a chance meeting with McIlroy that he treasures to this day. Competitive amateur Matt Toomey, from Brisbane, had never heard the names “McIlroy”, nor “Oliver Fisher”. Well, at least not until November 20, 2005 – a casual Sunday that was among the last days that a dyed-in-the-wool golfer anywhere in the world didn’t know the surname McIlroy.
Toomey’s one-under-par 70 in the first stage of Australian Open qualifying at Virginia Golf Club in Brisbane had punched his ticket to the final stage at Rosebud Country Club, eight kilometres from Moonah Links.
“I turned up at Rosebud on the Sunday in 2005 to play my practice round for the qualifier,” recalls Toomey, now an ABC film critic and Australian Golf Digest Top 100 Golf Courses panellist. “I walked to the 10th tee at 1pm and joined a game with two teenagers: some Northern Irish kid named Rory and an English lad named Oliver [the latter also a future European Tour winner]. Both guys had their dads caddieing for them.”
As Toomey, McIlroy and Fisher went about their practice round, the Aussie realised his playing partners were different gravy. Particularly McIlroy.
“I’d come across a lot of good golfers, but Rory and Oliver had this unbelievable ability to shape the ball both ways,” Toomey remembers distinctly. “Their short games were also fantastic. They were really nice guys; never upset by an errant shot and their dads were great blokes.”
Rookie American pro Spencer Levin won the final qualifier and, along with Adelaide’s David Lutterus, who was an amateur at the time, there were several players who would go on to earn PGA Tour cards.
Lutterus eventually played on tours around the world including the 2008 and 2010 PGA Tour seasons in the US. He’s now the director of instruction at the famed Medalist Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, where Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele are members. Lutterus has also come to know McIlroy through his occasional caddieing on the PGA Tour for close friend Day and laughs when told McIlroy had to tee up in the final qualifier at Rosebud. Lutterus shot 68, one better than McIlroy that day.
“I did not have a clue he played that day, but I love hearing that,” Lutterus tells Australian Golf Digest. “The guy’s literally a Grand Slam champion, and there he was at 16 in regional Victoria – not exactly the middle of the Sydney CBD. Rory’s a worldly player, and it’s so great he’s coming back this year. There isn’t anything in the game he hasn’t achieved.”
Toomey didn’t make it through from Rosebud, but he did write on his blog that night that “these two [players] are destined for bigger and better things, and I hope they have a very successful golfing career”. Particularly for McIlroy, it was a sound prediction.
LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT
So, what was McIlroy’s take on his debut trip to Australia, where he was able to escape the northern winter in Belfast? Clearly, love at first sight.
“I hadn’t played much golf before Australia, as the weather back home is so bad,” McIlroy said after a T-7 at the Dunes Medal at The Dunes Golf Links, an event won by Day. “I am just trying to make the most of my opportunities while I am out here in Australia, and it’s just good to have the sunshine on your back.”
McIlroy returned to Australia a year later. The golfer from Holywood, near Belfast, had won the prestigious West of Ireland Amateur Championship at County Sligo and the European Amateur Championship in Italy, which earned an exemption into his debut major: the 2007 Open Championship. McIlroy also represented Europe against the Asia-Pacific team at the Bonallack Trophy in New Zealand.
At the 2006 Australian Open at Royal Sydney, McIlroy made the cut, but a pair of 77s sank him to T-59. In a 2016 one-on-one interview with this writer, McIlroy said of the 2006 Australian Open: “I’m sure I tried to birdie the hardest holes and probably took on every difficult pin, regardless of the hazards. In 2006, not a soul in the world knew who I was [but] even back then, I was made to feel really welcome and I felt very relaxed on and off the course. What keeps me coming back [to Australia] is the welcome I always receive.”
McIlroy’s third trip to Australia in 2007 yielded his best result here in a professional tournament: a T-15 at the Australian Masters at Huntingdale, his first competitive taste of Melbourne Sandbelt golf. He was T-3 after the first two rounds.
Australian golf star Aaron Baddeley got to know McIlroy well that week through several dinners – and by being paired in the first two rounds with him. McIlroy was a big fan of Baddeley, who in 2007 had won the PGA Tour’s Phoenix Open and had played in the final group with Tiger Woods at the US Open at Oakmont.
“It was fantastic playing with Aaron,” McIlroy said at the time. “He’s a really good guy; we chatted about how he spent the year on the Nationwide Tour to get onto the PGA Tour.”
Baddeley, who won the Australian Open in 1999 as an amateur and again as a pro in 2000, told Australian Golf Digest in October that he still remembers the sound of McIlroy’s ball-striking.
“It was a fun week. We were staying just down the street from him and we had dinner a couple times that [my wife] Richelle came along to,” recalls 44-year-old Baddeley. “I was friends with his manager back then. On the Tuesday night, after the gala dinner, I gave him a lift back [to his accommodation] because he was sort of just sitting on the side waiting for a lift [laughs]. I could definitely hear there was a different strike to the ball; there was something special about him, for sure.
“I remember thinking it was like watching Ricky Ponting bat or watching Gary Ablett Jnr play Aussie rules football – the greats often look like they have so much time. They make it look so easy, even though it could be something quite difficult [like playing golf]. Tom Brady looks like he’s got all the time in the world to throw the football. Even in 2007 with Rory, there was just a simplicity and an ease to it.”
The 2007 Australian Masters had a storybook ending for Baddeley, who grew up on the Melbourne Sandbelt. After a four-hole playoff, he won the now-defunct tournament’s gold jacket. And there was a special guest in the gallery.
“Rory waited around in case I won and then he walked around for a couple of holes of the playoff, but when it went to a fourth extra hole, he was like, ‘Sorry, Badds, I’ve got to go to the airport!’ They were great memories.”
CLASH OF THE TITANS
Six years went by until McIlroy visited again, but the 2013 Australian Open was the first time McIlroy’s presence truly lifted the buzz around an Australian golf tournament. It didn’t matter that the 24-year-old was yet to win a tournament in the calendar year while struggling to adapt to his new Nike golf equipment; he was the 2011 US Open and 2012 PGA Championship winner. Sydney sports fans were eager to see a superstar.
The field included Day and the reigning Masters champion Scott, who in addition to being the first Australian to triumph at Augusta National, had claimed the PGA Tour’s Barclays tournament in New Jersey and the Australian PGA and Masters, meaning the Open at Royal Sydney was a chance to complete the Australian ‘Triple Crown’. Scott led almost the entire way in Sydney’s eastern suburbs until the final hole. His approach shot bounced over the back of the 18th green and led to a bogey, while McIlroy stuck a wedge close and made the birdie putt to win his only Stonehaven Cup so far.
Scott, speaking to Australian Golf Digest, said he still felt the disappointment 12 years on. He also remembers the feeling that McIlroy had become a genuine fan favourite who had the power to help lift our national championship back to the glory days of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. He commended McIlroy in signing on for two years of Australian Open; this year at Royal Melbourne and in 2026 at Kingston Heath.
“That [2013 Australian Open] was a huge disappointment because I’d won the Aussie Masters [and] the PGA, so it would have been cool to win all three that year,” recalls Scott, the 2009 Australian Open champion. “Rory is an incredibly influential figure in the game; maybe the most influential [golfer] playing at the moment.
“Comparisons with Tiger are tough, but if you look at where Tiger played, he valued travelling internationally as well. He valued taking his game [overseas] to develop it into a game that travels well. I remember early on as a pro, Tiger would play [and win] the Johnnie Walker Classic in Thailand, so I wanted to play that event. I’m sure there are young players out there seeing Rory play the India [event on the DP World Tour] or the Australian Open or other events, and that being attractive for players to want to play those events. It is possible that he can influence a lot in the game.
“With him committing to multi years at these events [including the Australian Open], there’s the possibility of good things happening to them, although nothing happens overnight.”
McIlroy returned to defend his title in 2014 at The Australian Golf Club, although he finished T-15 after a huge year in which he won the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool and the PGA Championship at Valhalla for his third and fourth majors. “Royal Sydney was the high point of 2013 and it gave me a lot of confidence and belief going into the 2014 season. I was able to concentrate on the strong and positive parts of my game and apply these as the year progressed,” McIlroy told Australian Golf Digest in that 2016 interview.
As his career truly took off and he became one of the most recognisable faces in world sport, McIlroy could not find the time to add the Australian Open to a schedule that was already bursting at the seams with PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Asian Tour events. He remarked in early 2020 that he wanted to tee it up at that year’s Australian Open, which was set for Kingston Heath, but the COVID-19 pandemic hit and cancelled the tournament.
The Open then moved to a mixed format with the men’s and women’s Australian Opens held concurrently, and that probably had far less appeal to overseas-based star players. Still, McIlroy loved the Australian Open from afar. In November 2023, McIlroy was asked what an ideal world golf tour would look like and his answer included a longing to prop up national opens.
“Some of the national opens, [we need to] try to revitalise some of those that have some great history in our game and a lot of tradition, like the Australian Open,” he said two years ago. “I look at the Australian Open trophy, and I see the names on that and, to me, that’s what being a professional golfer and being competitive is all about. It’s being able to try to compare yourself to previous generations.”
It comes as no surprise that there is a community of golf fans, both in Australia and overseas, who are ecstatic that he will tee up at the first Australian Open held at Royal Melbourne in 34 years. Even if they can’t get there. US-based Baddeley, recovering from injury and preparing for the PGA Tour’s qualifying school, doesn’t have plans to return but was thrilled McIlroy would headline the DP World Tour co-sanctioned event. And not just because McIlroy completed the career Grand Slam, but because of his resilience – a trait he feels will resonate with Australians.
McIlroy waited almost 11 years between major win No.4 and No.5. In that time, his highly publicised heartbreaks on golf’s biggest stage included losing the 54-hole co-lead to Cameron Smith at the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews, as well a runner-up at the 2023 US Open and missing two short putts en route to losing the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst to Bryson DeChambeau.
“Obviously, completing the career Grand Slam is beyond impressive and so is winning 29 times on the PGA Tour,” four-time winner Baddeley says. “Equally as impressive, to me, is his ability to bounce back. People with less heart or less drive wouldn’t have overcome the heartaches he dealt with.”
Locally, there are also predictions of record Australian Open crowds given that McIlroy will join Scott, Smith, Marc Leishman, Min Woo Lee, Lucas Herbert, Cameron Davis, Ryan Fox, Joaquin Niemann and Abraham Ancer among those confirmed for Royal Melbourne.
There are strong odds those galleries will include two men who witnessed McIlroy’s gifts up close before anyone outside Irish amateur golf did: Louey and Oliver. Both have followed his career since.
“Every time Rory would win a major, I’d get a text from ‘Oli’ saying, ‘Here’s our boy! Our boy’s won another one!” Louey says of Oliver. “Oli would say, ‘I knew he was going to be something special!’”
Asked if he would get out to Royal Melbourne, Oliver said casually, “Yeah, I’d love to. It’d be nice to catch up with him again.”
Indeed, it would. There’s plenty to catch up on.
Photography by: vaughn ridley, Warren Little, Ryan Pierse/getty images, mark metcalfe/getty images • right: warren little/getty images, carl recine/getty images • right: mark metcalfe/getty images
