The members at Holywood Golf Club in Belfast like to joke that you need one leg longer than the other to play the course. A typical parkland track set on the side of a hill on the outskirts of the city, Holywood is pleasant enough. Particularly the sweeping views out over Belfast Lough from the back nine. Truth be told, though, it is not even the best course in Holywood. That is Royal Belfast.

Holywood does have one ace up its sleeve, however. One which has made it one of the most famous courses in the world – it is the home club of Rory McIlroy.

The odds-on favourite for Thursday’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year jamboree – thanks to a stellar season in which he finally won his first Masters, becoming only the sixth man in history to complete golf’s grand slam and then walked through fire to inspire Europe to Ryder Cup victory at Bethpage Black. McIlroy’s first home was a couple of short par-fives from the course. A modest two-up, two-down on Church View.

The McIlroy family later moved to a red-brick semi on the corner of Belfast Road and Strathearn Court. You can still look over the wall and see the famous artificial putting green in the garden.

It is a crisp autumn day and I have arrived for the first of a three-day visit to McIlroy’s golfing heartland. I will be playing some of the courses McIlroy grew up on, visiting some of the places that have shaped the 36-year-old, and speaking to some of those involved about what it would mean for McIlroy to be recognised as the outstanding sportsperson of the year from the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland has only ever had three Spoty winners. Mary Peters in 1972, Barry McGuigan in 1985 and Tony McCoy in 2010. Remarkably, George Best never won it. Nor has McIlroy, who went closest in 2014, when he was beaten into second place by Lewis Hamilton. Lando Norris’s recent victory in the Formula One world championship has raised the prospect of another F1 driver pipping their man to the post, but Ruth Watt, Holywood’s Lady Captain, is confident Northern Ireland will turn out in force. “It’s about time we had another winner,” she says. “There’ll be a fair few tuning in from around here, I’m sure. Rory deserves it this year.”

Watt has been a member of Holywood for 20 years, which means McIlroy was about 13 when she joined. By then, he had already been a member for five years, the club famously having altered its own rules specifically to accommodate him, revising its minimum age for members from 12 down to eight.

McIlroy had grown up “whacking plastic golf balls around the clubhouse” while his dad Gerry worked behind the bar. But by seven, his talent was so obvious they needed to let him loose on the course. Under the tutelage of club pro Michael Bannon – still McIlroy’s coach and mentor – he began his inexorable rise.

Watt remembers him as a “cheeky wee boy” who hit the ball an absolute mile. “You knew just by the swing that he was something totally different,” she says. “I can still remember him hitting the green on the 17th [a par four of just over 350 yards].”

Watt takes me on a tour of the facilities. The honours boards on the stairwell, which contain not only McIlroy’s name but those of his uncle Colm, and dad Gerry – all three of them club champions – plus McIlroy’s long-time friend and caddie Harry Diamond (Holywood matchplay champion 2003).

There is the state-of-the-art gym that McIlroy helped to build thanks to a generous donation to the club in 2019, reportedly £1 million. McIlroy has a parking space which has pride of place opposite the pro shop. “He wouldn’t use it all that much now,” Watt admits. “But if anyone other than family parks in it, they’ll soon know about it.”

The glass cabinet contains replicas of his US Open trophy, the Wanamaker Trophy, and a scaled-down version of the Claret Jug. there are also McIlroy’s bags from the 2010, 2012 and 2014 Ryder Cups. The assistant in the pro shop points out one of Tiger Woods’s old bags, which McIlroy gifted to the club.

McIlroy may be Holywood’s most famous export. But he is also responsible for a fair amount of the incoming trade. These days enterprising local taxi drivers take tourists, many of them straight off cruise ships, on sightseeing tours of the area, including 18 holes at his old club. They want the full Holywood experience.

It has been a busy year on that front. “Rory sort of blew our world away on the 13th of April, and it has just been non-stop ever since,” says Watt, who recalls the packed bar on the night of McIlroy’s Masters win, when seniors from McIlroy’s old school, Sullivan Upper, watched his nail-biting play-off win against England’s Justin Rose wearing their green “honours” blazers.

A “sort of school colours” system, Watt explains. The following morning Sullivan Upper released a picture of McIlroy wearing his Sullivan green jacket, taken exactly 20 years before he wore his Augusta one.

Talk of McIlroy’s Masters heroics fails to inspire me out on the course, although the views, particularly from the 10th tee box, are memorable. In the distance you can see the famous Harland and Wolff shipyard, from which, a little over 100 years ago, RMS Titanic slowly steamed on her way out of Belfast.

McIlroy’s connection to the area runs deep. His grandfather, Jimmy – who began the family love affair with golf, passing the bug down to Gerry and uncles Colm and Brian – worked the cranes in Belfast docks. “I love flying into Belfast City airport,” McIlroy once said. “Normally you are coming over Belfast Lough, you look left and you see Helen’s Bay, Cultra, Holywood; where I grew up, basically. I don’t ever get a sense of that flying in anywhere else but I get it going into that airport. It’s something that is very important to me.”

The feeling is clearly mutual. McIlroy is revered not simply because of his sporting exploits but because he has given millions back to the community that raised him. He is also emblematic of a new generation, for whom sectarianism is not an issue. Raised a Catholic in a largely Protestant area, McIlroy’s great uncle was murdered in the Troubles but the family refused to be defined by it.

McIlroy may not be such a regular visitor these days, mainly dividing his time between sunny Florida and his new home in Wentworth. But he still retains a place on the waterfront.

“He wants to keep a Holywood address,” Watt explains, adding that McIlroy has never forgotten his roots; never added an extra ‘l’ to Holywood. “We would obviously love to see more of him,” she adds. “I have said to his dad ‘Now, Gerry, just put the cherry on the cake for me: Rory and his green blazer, we need a photograph!’ But it just gets harder. He’s so busy. But we’re ever so proud of him.

“With Rory, what you see is what you get. And that is why everyone loves him. He wears his heart on his sleeve and we all get swept up in it. The passion when he won at Augusta, when he went to his knees. We all had goosebumps, and tears in our eyes.”

It is the same story up in Portrush on Northern Ireland’s stunning Causeway Coast. Days two and three of my trip are spent here, playing nearby Castlerock, a challenging links with rolling dunes and captivating views of the Atlantic, and then, the piece de resistance:Royal Portrush itself. The famous Dunluce Links hosted the Open Championship in 2019 and again this summer when Rory-mania swept the nation. We stay at Dunluce Lodge, a smart new five-star spa hotel overlooking the fourth fairway, which just so happens to be where McIlroy stayed in July. In fact, NBC block-booked the entire place for the duration of the tournament, but Stephen Meldrum, the general manager, tells me McIlroy struck a deal with the American broadcaster to sublet a few of the rooms and ended up staying here with his wife Erica, daughter Poppy, and parents Gerry and Rosie.

It almost proved to be a winning move. A memorable five-under-par third-round 66, which included an eagle at 12 that produced a guttural roar that reverberated across Giant’s Causeway, briefly moved McIlroy into contention for the Claret Jug.

The home crowd LOVE IT! ❤️

HUGE eagle putt from Rory McIlroy 🙌 pic.twitter.com/VDZtyViZmX

— Sky Sports Golf (@SkySportsGolf) July 19, 2025

But in the end world No 1 Scottie Scheffler was too strong, winning by four shots as McIlroy finished tied for seventh. Still, it generated an estimated £280m in economic benefit for the region.

Gary McNeil, the head professional at Royal Portrush, is full of praise for the man McIlroy has become, saying how he would always ring ahead himself if he was coming to play, to ask permission. “And he was always very grateful and very thankful as well, whenever he came here. And that has never changed.”

McNeil has known McIlroy since he was a schoolboy playing in fixtures for Sullivan against Coleraine at Royal Portrush. “He was just a young kid back then, you know, a Titleist baseball cap on and a lot of hair hanging out the back of it. But you could just tell he loved it. He’d be in his second year, playing against some sixth-former about to head to university, and you know, he’s taking them out 7&6 or something.”

McNeil was in the pro shop the day McIlroy shot his famous course-record 61 at Portrush as a 16-year-old amateur, during the 2005 North of Ireland Amateur Championship qualifying. The scorecard is displayed in the clubhouse.

McNeil remembers his then assistant Darren McWilliams, who also happened to be from Holywood, getting texts from friends to say that McIlroy was lighting up the course. “So we rush out and we catch up with him on the 16th, which is now the 18th,” McNeil recalls.

“He was already nine under by this point. The thing that really sticks in my mind is that on the 17th tee he had a long wait because someone in the group ahead lost his tee shot and had to come all the way back to hit again. Rory had the presence of mind to take himself away, down to the ladies’ tee, which is probably, you know, 60 yards away, and he just stayed there by himself, practising his swing. Then he came back, teed it up, and just hit the most beautiful drive, just inside the right bunker, drawing it back into the middle of the fairway. It was really impressive.”

Safe to say I do not do the same. A night out in The Harbour Bar, a local institution crammed with signed flags, and photos of players and other golfing memorabilia, probably does not help. I can still taste the Guinness when I tee off the following morning. McIlroy famously hit two balls with one shot at this year’s Open, striking a long-forgotten ball submerged in the rough at the 11th. I’m pretty sure I was seeing two balls at one point. “Ah, they’re known for being pretty hospitable on the north coast,” McNeil says sympathetically.

What would it mean for McIlroy to win Spoty? Does anyone really care? It’s a load of old nonsense anyway, isn’t it? McNeil thinks it would mean a lot to the country. “I suppose he’s just been such a wonderful ambassador for Irish golf, for Northern Ireland,” he says.

“I mean, there will be a lot of people watching it. And I’m biased but I certainly think he should win. I mean, what he’s achieved… it’s phenomenal when you think about it. You know, so few players have managed to achieve that career grand slam in golf. And with how he performed at the Ryder Cup as well, on and off the course, with everything that the Europeans endured over there. I think he would be a very worthy winner.”

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