You know it isn’t your average Australian Open when you see 2000 people queuing up at the front gates of Royal Melbourne at 6am.
The gates weren’t even close to being opened, but local golf tragics weren’t letting that stop them. They wanted their piece of Rory McIlroy.
Rory McIlroy reacts after playing an approach shot to the 11th hole at Royal Melbourne on Thursday.Credit: AP
The superstar, who teed off at 7.05am, has had a roller-coaster start to his opening round at the course he on Wednesday described as “probably not the best course in Melbourne”. After a little over two hours on Thursday, the Northern Irishman had carded three birdies, three pars and three bogeys.
Playing alongside local heroes Adam Scott and Min Woo Lee, McIlroy had made the perfect start on the 10th hole, making birdie after two perfect shots and a solid putt.
But back-to-back bogeys after that brought him back to reality and McIlroy was clearly struggling to read the pace of the greens, which have taken on a lot of rain recently.
Joining the tens of thousands of spectators on the course on Thursday were – what would have felt like for McIlroy – thousands of flies. The reigning US Masters champion was caught on camera several times giving the pesky bugs the Australian salute of swatting them away.
After being labelled as an inferior course to Kingston Heath less than 24 hours earlier, Royal Melbourne had its revenge on several occasions.
On the 17th hole, after watching Scott duck-hook his tee shot left of the fairway, McIlroy took his driver out of the bag for the first time. Somehow, he managed to hit it even further left.
