Rory McIlroy doubles down on Kingston Heath call, suggesting that technology has altered Royal Melbourne.
Rory McIlroy has added further detail to the comments he made during the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne, where he surprised fans by ranking Kingston Heath higher on his personal Sandbelt list. Appearing on The Shotgun Start podcast, McIlroy said his views hadn’t shifted and even floated Victoria as another course he places ahead of the famous composite layout.
Before getting into his course opinions, it’s worth noting that McIlroy didn’t exactly arrive in peak tournament mode. His week in Australia included a rapid‑fire tour of five Sandbelt courses and a full slate of social commitments, that crazy banana peel golf shot, and he still managed a T14 at 7‑under, finishing eight shots behind Rasmus Neergaard‑Petersen.
This context matters because course rankings are always subjective, and it’s not easy to separate a player’s affection for a layout from how well or how poorly they played it.
Ok, let’s jump into what Rory said.
McIlroy began by praising what still works at Royal Melbourne, especially around the greens. However, from the tee, the course now plays differently than its designers intended.
“The green complexes are amazing… absolutely incredible,” said McIlroy. “But I feel like there might be, of all the fairway bunkers on the course, one that’s in play.”
The issue, he explained, is that modern distances change, which clubs players use from the tee, removing some of the original decision‑making.
“You don’t really get to hit a lot of drivers off the tees. If everything was scaled back a little bit, then that golf course would play the way it should play,” said McIlroy. “There’s a lot of blind tee shots, I thought there was going to be more from tee to green, until you reach the green, I felt like I didn’t get that.”
He stressed that the course itself hasn’t necessarily declined, it’s the equipment that has changed the relationship between players and the design.
“Maybe it is a great golf course, and maybe it’s just that technology has made it, I don’t want to say obsolete, but it has passed it by a little bit,” said McIlroy. “It doesn’t quite play the way it once did.”
McIlroy also confirmed he will be back in Australia next year for the Australian Open at Kingston Heath, giving him another chance to play the Sandbelt layout he holds in such high regard.
Earlier in the podcast, before the Sandbelt discussion, McIlroy spent time talking about the planned 2028 rollback of the golf ball. He reminisced about hitting early Pro V1 prototypes as a junior and how dramatically the modern ball has changed distance and stability.
“Even the original Pro V1 compared to the ball we play now in 2025, just how much further this thing goes, it’s insane,” said McIlroy. “That was the start of it.”
When asked about the upcoming rollback, McIlroy expressed doubt that it will achieve the governing bodies’ intended effect. With manufacturers years ahead in research and development, he believes today’s distance gains may simply re‑emerge by the time the new ball becomes mandatory.
“These equipment companies are so good and have so many resources that by the time we play this thing in 2028, there’s just not going to be any difference.”
Rather than targeting just the ball, McIlroy said he prefers a broader rollback, including reducing the size of modern driver heads to bring back the premium on centre‑face contact.