When Jack Nicklaus was in his pomp and Gary Player was too, and Arnold Palmer was so famous and good he commanded his own “Army”, the trio made up what the great raconteur and founder of International Management Group, Mark McCormack, coined “The Big Three”.

And wherever they went, eyeballs were drawn to follow like migratory moths to three golden suns.

McCormack was the first to realise that famous sports people could take financial advantage of their fame. Endorsements, appearance fees, their names upon what we today call “merch”. McCormack worked out that people would pay for these things, for association to their “celebrity”, as they did with stars of other entertainments.

Prior to this, the greatest players of the time – Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, go back to Walter Hagen – would play for prize money from gate takings, and play matches at clubs and maybe do trick shots. It’s what Gene Sarazen was doing in Australia when he missed the first Masters in 1934. Is what sustained our own Joe Kirkwood.

In January of 2015, whlilst tooling about on the Twitter, I initiated a conversation with the man-of-the-hour here at Royal Melbourne, Rory McIlroy, loosely based on this very issue.

Rory had asserted that Marshawn Lynch – a running back with the Seattle Seahawks and a man I had never heard of - needn't talk to media after matches. I asserted that there was a quid pro quo, that Marshawn and Rory were very wealthy because of the media interest him.

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And we went back and forth, and it was in good spirit, even if a thousand of Rory's followers, and that many again of Marshawn Lynch’s followers, descended upon me like so many monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, and there was no reasoning to these people, and that's all I have to say about that.

And so! We’re here at Royal Melbourne for the Oz Open, and crowds, as they were for the IMG Big Three, are lining each fairway, and even subsequent fairways, five-, six-, seven-deep.

Around the greens it is thicker again – eight-, even ten-deep, people straining to see the famous McIlroy, and our own major winner, Adam Scott, and the hot and marketable young’n, Min Woo Lee, “The Chef”, “Dr Chipinski”, call him what you will.

 


The Melbourne sports fan has come, as they always do, for world class action. They came for the Presidents Cup, the Australian Open of tennis, the W.S Cox Plate.

The clever ones here at RM have prepared and brought their own step-ladders; milk crates no longer being a thing.

The rest, it’s tippy-toes and iphones up like periscopes.

Which took me back in time, again, to the original angle of this gibber-jabber, and the periscopes, pictured here, that fans once used on busy days following Arnie and co. at the golf.

Spectators look on using periscopes to view as Jack Nicklaus plays an approach shot to the 3rd green during the 58th PGA Championship golf tournament at the Congressional Country Club in 1976. PHOTO: Getty Images

Check them out. Two mirrors, top and bottom of a little chimney-looking thing. They would make sense today. You could probably make your own. A canny creator and salesman could do decent trade on the streets outside RM, like a hot dog man, though they would likely be run off, so protective are big event managers of their own commercial interest.

Regardless, those sports fans who've perched themselves halfway up fairways are close enough to hear the preternatural crack of the golf club on the golf ball performed by these great players.

 


On 14 McIlory hits an 8-iron that's a pure, crisp spank. On 17, Min Woo hits his mini-driver off the deck, there's a near-supersonic crack. Man it sounds good.

Scott makes a putt on 14 and the people exclaim, Yeeeahhh, in good voice. It’s not Dan Hillier conducting the crowd for a few bars of "Sweet Caroline" before rolling in a downhill 12-footer for par, but nothing has been nor perhaps will be again, for that was glorious.

But it was still a pretty good cheer.

Rory McIlroy found the Royal Melbourne greens tricky in the northerly wind in round one of the Australian Open. PHOTO: Getty Images

On 15, a devilish, sloping par-4 with a green with a swale like the jagged mouth of a sperm whale, Rory rolls in a bomb and thick wedge of humanity that’s straining for a look at him cheers in good voice, and is rewarded with a ball-raise in their direction.

The great man will make seven pars, six bogies and five birdies in his 1-over score of 73, as huffy old Royal Melbourne asserts Kingston Heath, indeed.

Kingston Heath indeed.