Rory McIlroy has added further details to comments he made at the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne, where he surprised fans by moving Kingston Heath higher on his personal Sandbelt list. Appears on The Shotgun Start PodcastMcIlroy said his views had not changed and in fact Victoria was a new course which he puts ahead of the famous composite layout.
Before we get into his course recommendations, it’s worth noting that McIlroy didn’t exactly get into peak tournament mode. His week in Australia included a quick tour of five Sandbelt courses and a slew of social engagements, that crazy banana peel golf shot, and he still managed a T14 at 7-under, finishing eight shots behind Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen.
This context is important because the ranking of a course is always subjective and it is not easy to separate a player’s affection for a layout from how well or how poorly he played it.
Okay, let’s continue with what Rory said.
McIlroy started by praising what is still working at Royal Melbourne, especially around the greens. However, from the tee the course now plays differently than the designers intended.
“The green complexes are amazing…absolutely incredible,” McIlroy said. “But I have a feeling that of all the fairway bunkers on the course, there might be one in play.”
The problem, he explained, is that the modern distances that club players use off the tee are changing, taking away some of the original decision-making.
“You don’t really get a lot of drivers off the tees. If everything was scaled back a little bit, the golf course would play the way it should play,” McIlroy said. “There are a lot of blind tee shots, I thought there would be more from tee to green, until you get to the green I felt like I didn’t get that.”
He emphasized that the track itself has not necessarily deteriorated; it’s the equipment that has changed the relationship between players and the design.
“Maybe it’s a great golf course, and maybe it’s just that technology has made it, I don’t want to say outdated, but it’s kind of gone by the wayside,” McIlroy said. “It doesn’t quite play the way it once did.”
McIlroy also confirmed he will be back in Australia for the Australian Open at Kingston Heath next year, giving him another chance to play the Sandbelt layout he holds so highly.
Earlier in the podcast, before the Sandbelt discussion, McIlroy talked about the planned rollback of the golf ball in 2028. 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’re playing now in 2025, how much further this thing goes, it’s insane,” McIlroy said. “That was the beginning of it.”
When asked about the impending rollback, McIlroy expressed doubt that it will achieve the governing bodies’ intended effect. With manufacturers years ahead in research and development, he believes current distance gains could simply reemerge 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 just won’t be any difference.”
Rather than just focusing on the ball, McIlroy said he prefers a wider rollback, including reducing the size of modern driver heads to bring back premium center-plane contact.
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