It is a fraught pursuit, golf tipping; the fields are the size of six Melbourne Cups, “exposed form” is fractious, and conditions can be diametrically different for morning and afternoon players. This hasn't stopped Deputy Editor Matt Cleary from ponying up (and no doubt mocking to death) his tip to beat the Master, Rory McIlroy, in this 2025 Australian Open.
If you, by chance, are a betting man or woman, there are relatively succulent odds for this 2025 Australian Open outside the Big Three or Four, or in this case, the Big One.
In other words, as Rodney Rude once said, grab a dart, put it in your mouth (feathers first) and have someone throw the freakin’ board at you.
Class will tell, of course, and that’s why bookies have Rory McIlroy at near-prohibitive odds of 3-1 (or $4 on your phone app, kids).
But the great man will need luck like anyone. Because Melbourne is a flat-out kook for weather (and for drinking longnecks on milk crates in graffiti-strewn alleys; a story for another time).
There is a terrible, hot, thick nor-wester from the Hay Plains, often replaced by a southerly change that comes from Bass Strait and before that, Antarctica. You can cop them both in the same day. The same hour. It can be hot and cold and hot again. The winds can be of various mood swings.
The greens will be hard and fast, so much November rain or nowt. The bunkers will be hard-cut against the greens in that wonderfully stylised way of the Sandbelt. This is not point and shoot golf. You bomb at flags, you can bounce away to buggery. Precision on the ground and in the wind is key.
It’s great for watching golf, at least on television, because the players can be buffeted about like drunks on a golf trip. It perhaps says a lot about us, but there’s cracking entertainment in seeing a buck professional in pristine, blinding-white pants being scratched by thistles and spear grass, and trying to hack their ball from clutching tea tree.
Broadcaster Channel Nine should do a highlights package of shots from deep thickets. Call it death-by-Boomba at Moomba. Just spit-balling, folks, for kicks.
McIlroy will relish the conditions, of course. The man’s a marvel and clearly the standout top-class man of the day. But we’re still tipping a local to knock him off.
A pair of Victorians with Sandbelt pedigree, Lucas Herbert and Marc Leishman, are decent chances of collecting their maiden Stonehaven.
Herbert teed-off in the last group of the Australian Open at Kingston Heath last year before faltering, while Leishman played his way into a tie for third, as he did at last week’s Australian PGA Championship.
For the boy from woolly Warrnambool, who was also in a play-off for the Open Championship at St Andrews in 2015, golf in the wind is just golf. And at 42, he has plenty of sap in him to compete.
Cameron Smith? Something going on with our Open champion. And it must be mental. Man needs a stint on the couch – and not while drinking longnecks and cheering on a replay of Brisbane Broncos in the grand final.
In the “Drinks With…” Q&A in our December issue, on shelves now, subscribe here or give the gift of Christmas, Smith says that at the start of last season he “lost a lot of confidence, particularly with my shorter irons".
"I just wasn’t able to make enough birdies, because I wasn’t hitting it close enough. I’ve been working through that, and the game actually doesn’t feel too bad. It just hasn’t been there, and it sucks,” Smith says.
And following his form in the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland – when he shot 69-75 to miss the cut - we’ll take Cameron at his word and run a line through him and be happy if he gets up and makes fools of us.
Elsewhere, you don’t have to be the Whispering Peter Allis to predict that Joaquin Niemann and Adam Scott should be somewhere near the pointy end of the leaderboard come tournament Sunday, and that Si Woo Kim isn't out here for a haircut.
Indeed, while the South Korean Presidents Cup man's Sandbelt pedigree is effectively a hit-out for South Korea in the 2018 World Cup of Golf at Metropolitan, he has won four times on the PGA Tour of the United States, including the 2017 Players Championship, and earned $US30.9 million ($AUD47.1 million).
So he's not a mug, is what we might take from that.
Elsewher, Kiwis Ryan Fox, Dan Hillier, Nick Voke and Kazuma Kobori did plenty right in the PGA Championship last week, while you could keep safe Anthony Quayle, Cam Davis and Spaniard David Puig who ran off with the PGA Championship of Australia in a canter.
Instead, however, head on the block, we’re going with a local boy to knock over the great champion of Northern Ireland, and that man is “Dr Chipinski”, “The Chef”, the pride of Royal Fremantle, Min Woo Lee.
The 27-year-old broke his duck on the big boy PGA Tour with a win at the Houston Open in March, and that after winning the 2023 PGA Championship at Royal Queensland. Lee’s career wins include the Open championships of Macau, Victoria and Scotland.
This year he has made 15 cuts in 20 events. Three of those cuts were in major championships, however, and he was 49th in the other one, the Masters. He has earned $US3.4 million, for all that, however, and in October in the Baycurrent Classic in Japan he ran 10th, eight shots behind Xander Schauffele.
Regardless, Lee is back home among the normies now. His most recent jump-out at Royal Queensland showed that, when his game's on, he has the length to give himself many shots at birdie. He co-led the PGA last week but didn't take advantage of the par-5s and finished four back the champion Puig of Spain.
But here at RM, in our mind’s eye, we’re seeing him bomb down fairways with hybrids off the tee, smoke his ball under the wind, and hit stinging mid-irons that seem impervious to it. We’re seeing him waft the ball around the greens, bump-n-run style, even putting from downtown, all soft hands and feels. Head, heart, wallet; you have to love The Chef, it’s like it’s the law.
McIlroy, of course, has a different law; one that says he is a much better player, on all levels, than anyone else in the field.
But we like the Chef get cookin' here at RM.
Go him.
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