In Rory McIlroy’s humble hometown, they always saw him coming

HOLYWOOD, Northern Ireland — In time, the modest golf club here, named for the town in which it sits ruggedly on the side of a high hill, will become to Rory McIlroy what the Latrobe Golf Club, in Western Pennsylvania, is to Arnold Palmer. That is, a sort of living museum. In ways, it already is.

On Monday, while McIlroy was preparing to play in the 153rd Open Championship — a rural hour’s drive north of here at Royal Portrush — there was a modest trickle of visitors to the unassuming Holywood Golf Club. The folks wanted to see Rory McIlroy’s replica trophies from his victories in the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and the British Open. More than that, they wanted to see the club where Rory grew from curly-haired prodigy hanging around the practice green to the sixth player to win the modern career Grand Slam.

“We’re still waiting for something from Augusta,” said Paula Denvir, a recent Lady Captain of the club where the McIlroy surname is all over the club walls. She was mid-tour. In April, Masters Sunday, she practically had a heart attack, watching Rory. She was at the club, in its social hall. That is, its communal bar. Denvir hopes to get a replica green coat or something from Augusta but understands the club has various and complicated rules regarding club coats, and even facsimiles.

As a Holywood captain, Denvir has a green coat of her own. The whole club coat thing is very, very British. Denvir represents the club with distinct pride. If Holywood is looking to increase its tourist traffic, it would have Lady Paula give every tour, and give the visitors, the kids among them especially, a chance to put on her club coat, as an aspirational thing.

That’s really the point here. You don’t need to have an indoor launch monitor in a suburban McMansion to make it in professional golf. Arnold Palmer and Rory McIlroy, to say nothing of Gary Player and Vijay Singh and Jon Rahm and Danny Willett — among other members of Augusta’s Tuesday-night Supper Club — made it to game’s highest altitudes under scrappy circumstances, as McIlroy did. You visit Holywood and you leave knowing the truth of that.

Elsewhere at the club, a member with white hair and matching beard, had finished playing a round of golf with his wife, and was now recalling the last time he saw Rory in the flesh, a couple of years ago.

“It was at a café in town, he was sitting with Harry Diamond, looking at a menu,” the man, John Stevenson, was saying. Harry Diamond is Rory’s caddie and was his childhood mate. Diamond’s name, likeness and image, as a junior golfer at Holywood alongside Rory, is on display at the club, too. Stevenson made a mock oder recommendation at the café that day. 

“He turned around, looked up and said, ‘Sir!’” Stevenson said of McIlroy.

Stevenson was the principal and headmaster at a school a half-mile from the course, Upper Sullivan, a tuition-free public institution that requires an admissions test.

It wasn’t that Rory forgot Stevenson’s name. He’s actually good with names. Sir is the term every student at Upper Sullivan uses for the male head of school. It’s a British thing. Maybe you are familiar with the movie To Sir, With Love, theme song by Lulu, Sidney Poitier playing Sir, a formidable school teacher.

Stevenson’s story brought to mind the day in March 2009, 16 fast years ago, when Rory and his father, Gerry, were in the parking lot of the Palm Beach Gardens Mall, down the road from where the Honda Classic was being played. Rory was playing the Florida Swing for the first time, en route to his first Masters. Jack Nicklaus, in the parking lot, recognized the father and son and went over to say hi.

“Mr. Nicklaus,” Rory said.

“Jack!” said Gerry.

Gerry has always had a lot of Irish in him — that casual quality. Rory plays for Ireland as an Olympian, but you could see him taking tea at Kensington Palace, in a bespoke suit and all the rest. He did show his Irish at the last Ryder Cup, in Rome. That was fun. Can you imagine Joe LaCava and Rory McIlroy going three rounds over a hat? Shane Lowry, big-boned Irishman and Rory’s good mate, stepped in.

The Legend of Rory has grown exponentially since he played in his first Masters in 2009. I interviewed Rory a couple months before that, in Southern California, and later made a trip to Holywood. I’ve been telling people for years how bright Rory is, and how he scored 1,300 on his SAT, without taking a prep course for it. A grotesque exaggeration! Reading the SI story from 2009 now, I see his score was 1,180.

But Mr. Stevenson said on Monday what he said to me in 2009: Rory was a bright kid, and Upper Sullivan grads almost always go to university. But in the U.K., young people start their careers, in plumbing and professional golf and many other pursuits, at a much younger age. Rory was done with school before he turned 16. He had found his calling. Stevenson noted that his former student has become a serious reader.

Gerry McIlroy was a barman at Holywood Golf Club, where you will see kids at tables along the wall, drinking Cokes and eating chips, watching the cricket on TV. The golf course was busy on a windy, cool summer afternoon — with a brief downpour — but not at all packed. The 17th hole still serves as the club’s driving range. Rory hasn’t played the course in 15 or so years but he did tell me, years ago, how the swoops and swales and uneven lies of the Holywood course did, in a manner of speaking, prepare him from Augusta.

The course was in good shape. Anybody can go on the club’s website and secure a tee time. The pro shop has various nods to McIlroy as the winner of the career Grand Slam. But you can also buy an accordion-style ball retriever in the shop. And don’t even think about cleaning your clubs in the locker room, where this sign hangs:

The washing of Golf Shoes & Clubs
Is strictly prohibited in the
Toilet Wash Hand Basins
And the Showers.

I remembered that sign from my 2009 visit, and I was relieved to see it was still there. The club didn’t go all fancy just because one of their former junior golfers became the sixth player to win the career Slam.

You could say that sign hints at Rory’s future success. Nobody from a la-di-da background makes it in professional golf these days. The game is too difficult. It requires so much effort to get good.

But laddy-boy McIlroy had another thing going for him, growing up in a modest house in Holywood, with his school and his golf course and his parents so nearby. He had an instructor up the road, Michael Bannon, at Bangor Golf Club, who didn’t impose his ego on a prodigious young talent. He had the opportunity to travel and compete and see the world as a kid. And he had big dreams. Just as 10-year-old Tiger Woods watched Jack Nicklaus win the 1986 Masters, 10-year-old Rory McIlroy watched Woods do otherworldly things.

From the highest point of the 6,000-yard-long course, you can see far and wide, and what you can’t see, you can imagine. Royal County Down, an hour away, one of the most celebrated courses in the world, where McIlroy played in a Walker Cup shortly before turning pro. Royal Portrush, where the Open will unfold this week. Royal this and royal that. Grand this and grand that. All that aspiration. Now we wait on Rory’s every shot and every pronouncement. Once, not that long ago, he was a kid. Just another kid. Looking down, and looking up.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com