There are days at a golf club that become part of its history. And this day, when Rory McIlroy came to St Enodoc, is one nobody who was there will ever forget.
It began with fevered rumours and ended with the Grand Slam winner, joined by former Open Champion Shane Lowry and Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald, walking up the club’s famous 18th hole to rapturous applause.
In between were tales that will go down in folklore at the Cornwall club: from a broken-down mower to some quite incredible golf shots, and an audience that couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing.
We’ve spoken to the people who were there: from Finn Ellis, who was the fourth member of the fourball, to William Smith, Head Greenkeeper. George Tunbridge, the club’s General Manager, and Tim Cowley, PGA Head Professional, are also joined by Club Captain Michael Roach and long-term member Chris Mitchell to recount an incredible day in St Enodoc’s history. This is the story of the visit through their words…
Rory McIlroy at St Enodoc
It is supposed to be a quiet Friday fourball. But secrets are hard to keep. And word is starting to spread that some of golf’s biggest names are coming to town…
Finn Ellis: Luke is my mum’s brother (Finn’s uncle) and a member of St Enodoc. I knew Shane and Rory, and their families, had booked a place near us, so I knew they were going to be staying.
Luke messaged me probably a week before, saying, ‘Is there any chance we can get a tee time? I think they would love to play’. I booked it and we tried [to keep it a secret]. It didn’t work. It didn’t work at all. But we did try and keep it a secret. It got out.
George Tunbridge: [It’s Thursday evening] I was about to play for the club in a scratch match against Newquay. I’m trying to get tidied up in the office and go out and lose my point.
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Louis Archer, who works in the shop, came in and said, ‘I’ve got some bad news’. I said, ‘What’s that?’, because he was playing as well.
He said, ‘Well, it looks like I’m not going to be the best golfer at the club tomorrow’. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Rory and Shane are showing up with Luke Donald’.
I said, ‘Pull the other one’. Louis has obviously started talking about it to the guys we’re playing against, and our match [now] isn’t even about the match. It’s ‘Do you think they’re coming tomorrow?’
We get into the clubhouse afterwards and someone came up to me and said, ‘It’s not a rumour’. It’s about 8.30 pm, ‘they’re coming’, and I was like, ‘Oh my god’.
Tim Cowley: Straight away George has phoned everyone around the club – from the Captain, to the Chairman, to the staff. What are we opening up to? How many people are coming?
George: I was really paranoid about paparazzi in some capacity. I thought the worst thing that could possibly happen is they’ve got this game of golf planned and they tee off at 1 pm. They arrive in the car park at half 11 or 12 and the whole of Cornwall knows.
So they just turn around and go, ‘We’re not doing that’. Even in the match situation I’m playing in, the Newquay lads were hearing about it and so all the lads we were playing against were just saying, ‘We’re going to finish work early tomorrow, and guess what we’re going to do?’
Tim: Fast forward to the morning and someone at the club has tracked Rory’s jet into Newquay. I know of a photo that got posted around of Shane Lowry coming out of Tesco in Wadebridge with his family and a shopping cart. And you’re going, ‘OK, this is now happening. It’s real’.
For St Enodoc Head Greenkeeper William Smith and his team, the challenge to present the course at its best takes an unlikely turn on that Friday morning…
George: William, our Head Greenkeeper, is the best guy ever. He texts me at 6 am. A mower’s packed up and it’s dropped 50 litres of oil and smashed into a wall.
William Smith: We were tidying up around the clubhouse, had one of our mowers cutting the surrounds to our front putting green, and it leaked oil all around the putting green.
We drove it out onto the path and it lost all its power, steering and brakes, and crashed straight into a wall and a hedge at the entrance leading up to our clubhouse.
‘Oh my god! Of all the days that you’re going to have this issue’.
I drove back up to the clubhouse, and my first view was a mower wedged in a narrow walkway. We had to lift the mower out because we couldn’t get it out any other way.
We got it tidied up. We used a pressure washer because there was oil leaking on the path leading up to the clubhouse.
Can you imagine if you got Rory walking up the path and he slips over and he hurts his ankle and then he can’t play in The Open?
We got the wall rebuilt and by the time any of the office staff came in, nobody even knew anything had happened.
Now there is no longer any doubt. They are coming – and anticipation at the club is building by the minute…
Michael Roach: I didn’t know until about 8.30 pm the previous evening, when George phoned and said, ‘We’ve got some visitors coming you might be interested in’.
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I think the reality was they were hoping for a quiet Friday afternoon fourball. Well, social media being what it is, that didn’t actually happen…
Chris Mitchell: The thing about St Enodoc is there are a lot of interesting members: Former Prime Minister David Cameron, Luke Donald and Thomas Detry, Roger Chapman and Paul Broadhurst. And they want to pay a sub. They want to be members and to be able to just turn up and carry a bag around. But to have those guys playing was very special.
William: When I got the phone call, I thought ‘this is the coolest thing that’s happened to St Enodoc’.
I said to the guys [in the morning], ‘We’ve got an important day today. It’s a special day. We have Luke Donald playing today, and he’s brought somebody with him’.
‘That somebody is the guy that sank the winning putt in the Ryder Cup last year’, and they were all like, ‘Wow, oh my god, Shane’s coming!’
I said, ‘They’re also bringing another guy called Rory’. Everybody was like, ‘oh my god’.
‘Everybody has got to be on their game. Just think of the honour and the privilege it is to be presenting our course to a Grand Slam winner, a Ryder Cup winner, and the Ryder Cup captain. It just doesn’t get any better than this.’
Finn: I was very excited. I actually went to the course about three hours early because I just couldn’t sit still. I went up and did some practice. Everyone was milling around, ‘Are they coming? Are they not?’
Rory, Shane and Luke arrive. But there is nothing theatrical about it. No entourage, no caddies, no fuss…
Tim: The guys turn up with their carry bags on their shoulders – no tour bags. We’re talking a stand bag over the shoulder. They walk round outside the shop and the changing rooms and put their bags down.
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They leave them outside the changing rooms, walk in, put their shoes on, and go in for some lunch. In that moment, they’re at the golf club in the same capacity as any other visitor. They left their golf clubs just unattended out front.
George: We were so proud of the membership. Nobody bothered them when they were having their lunch. They were coming to play golf, and they were the same as anyone else. That was cool.
William: I’d been saying, ‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’ The only additional thing we did that Friday morning was put out the championship tees and give the greens an extra roll.
Other than that, we didn’t change our routine whatsoever because we were really happy with where we had the course. We weren’t chasing anything.
Tim: Rory and Shane walk on to the putting green, people are watching them, and they’re hitting putts. But as they are standing on the putting green with lots of eyes on them, Luke is standing shoulder to shoulder with the members and he’s watching the two of them. It’s a very surreal moment where you go, ‘the three-time Ryder Cup captain is actually one of us’.
William: I spoke to Rory on the putting green after he had a few strokes. He said they were quicker than Birkdale. He’d been there practising earlier in the week and he said they were a lot slower up there in the lead-up to The Open.
The surreal feeling intensifies as the group moves to the 1st tee. Finn, the fourth member of the fourball, is about to tee it up alongside three of his heroes…
Finn: Around the 1st tee it was busy. I didn’t really expect the amount of people to be there, so it went from excitement to nerves just before.
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[My tee shot] It went OK, not great. It went sort of forward, so that was good. It wasn’t the normal 1st tee nerves, it was different, but I thought, ‘If I just dribble one off the front of the tee, that wouldn’t be great’. I put it in the left rough. It wasn’t a great shot, but it went relatively straight.
It was me and Rory (vs Shane and Luke, in match play). The night before, we decided that was what we were going to do. I asked for some shots, but they didn’t give me any…
We were up for the front nine and then they came back. I think it was 2&1, or something like that.
Tim: All four of them nailed it down the 1st and they picked their carry bags up over their shoulder and the four of them just walked down the 1st. Everyone held their ground.
They just went into the horizon. You rise up to the first high point, look over the Atlantic, and they had that to themselves, which was wonderful.
Chris: It was like going off the Sunday morning fourball. They teed off and they were just left on their own. It was bizarre, seeing Rory, Shane and Luke walking down the 1st fairway with nobody walking with them at all.
Michael: I took myself down to the 3rd and a few members had turned up then, but they were extremely respectful. They kept their distance. But you don’t get the World No.2 turning up every day of the week, so there was obviously a great interest.
The opening holes offer a glimpse of the golf that is to come and the course reveals how spectacular it truly is…
George: If you put an 8-handicap on the 6th tee, I don’t think they reach the fairway. it’s a brutally hard hole. I’m off about scratch and for me it’s a good drive, which just about gets you in position to take on the Himalayas for two.
When we had England Golf County Finals last year, they moved it from the blue tee up to white. So Rory stands there with what looks like a 4-iron, belts one down to about 170, and then stuffs it into about two feet.
William: It was just the most perfect position. I was up on the bank by the green, and he put his second shot to within two feet of the pin. Wow.
It just doesn’t happen. You would never expect anybody to hit an iron that far and that precisely, especially when he’s looking at his yardage book, then he looks around the corner to see where the pin is, and he just puts it there. It was just phenomenal.
Finn: It was a front pin, it’s downwind and you can’t stop it, and he hit a wedge and it just looked perfect in the air. From the fairway we couldn’t see it, and then there was a big reaction from the crowd. We walked up there and it’s like a foot away. It was such a hard shot.
William: On the 8th, Luke Donald hit the pin. He nearly had a hole in one. It was funny. He walked up to the green and said, ‘That was nearly expensive’. We had a whole theatre of people watching there.
Finn: I think Shane said we would have gone straight in. He hit it to about three feet and Rory hit it pretty close as well. That was quite fun. There were three scares of the hole.
William: It was such a pleasure to watch the quality of golf and to see them enjoying our course. You could see they were having fun. It wasn’t a big thing. It wasn’t a competition.
While those moments are impressive enough, being close to three icons of the game over 18 holes offers everyone something else: a chance to see what golf is really like at the very highest level…
Finn: I tried to be conscious of watching Rory and Shane and how they hit shots. I asked Shane on a couple, ‘How would you see this?’ Like on a couple of par 3s – would you fade it or would you draw it? It was nice they were open and telling me stuff. Rory gave me a little bit of a swing lesson halfway through, and it was just cool that they were interested in my game as well. They didn’t have to be.
I was picking up little tips here and there – I didn’t want to be asking hundreds of questions. [Rory] He told me I get a bit disconnected – sort of throwing my arms at it – and he gave me a drill, where you put a ball in between your forearms and hit it.
Michael: I obviously know the course very well, and play off a reasonable handicap, so I was genuinely interested to see how they approached it and what their thinking was.
It was fascinating to see how they approached their shots and the routines they went through. You can’t really get inside their head, but it was interesting how they set themselves up to play the course.
Rory is one of the longest hitters in the world right now, and he wasn’t really in competition mode. It was fun mode, really. But the distances he hits the golf ball are just unreal.
Chris: I’ve been close to many top golfers but with Rory, when you’re up close to him, the sound and the strike is so pure. When you stand behind him, the ball just keeps going off into orbit. It just keeps climbing.
William: People’s mouths drop. It’s the force he hits that ball, but it’s a perfectly timed swing. It doesn’t matter how much golf you watch, when you hear him hit the ball, it just sounds different.
Shane played some beautiful golf, especially around the greens. He’s got a deft touch. It didn’t matter where they were, if they were in the rough, if they were in the thick rough, they got out of it, and they were on the green. But it wasn’t even like, ‘Oh, they’re on the green’. They were on the green within five or six feet.
Finn: Watching Rory hit his driver, up close, was very impressive. Obviously, I’ve seen it live but when you’re stood on the tee… It just makes a different noise when Rory hits it and people’s reactions were fun to watch.
He’s so good and plays at such a high level – even though it was just a fun game. And Shane and Luke, their games are unbelievable.
Into the closing stretch, brilliant golf continues to be played. But there is also something very clear about the group – they are enjoying themselves…
George: I’m stood up behind the green on the 13th. Rory, again, has just hit a drive to a silly position and I’m with one of our greenkeepers, Neil Robinson, who cut the pins that morning.
The hole slopes away to the right-hand side and Rory’s stood there – with maybe 80 yards. He pitches it, it goes up to the pin, spins and falls down the hill.
As it’s falling down the green off the hill, Neil goes: ‘Yes!’ It was like he’d just seen his team score an FA Cup final winner. It’s like ‘I’ve just done Rory McIlroy!’ Job satisfaction was at an all-time high, so that was quite funny.
William: My guy who changes the holes had put the pin at the front of the green, because it does run off that green quite well. And he was like, ‘Yes, I can even fool Rory’.
Tim: We get onto the 15th tee and there was a little bit of a backup. It’s 10 minutes on a busy day. Rory’s sitting down on the side of the tee – with his phone – and guys are chatting away.
We’ve got a 16-year-old member who plays off plus two in the group ahead and, suddenly, he’s standing there waiting to hit his shot at 15.
You’ve got Shane, Luke, and Rory and Alfie Chapman, who won our Club Championship not long after. He’s about to hit a golf shot in front of the three of them and, crikey, did he hit a golf shot. The pin was back left – and he’s turned this thing right to left – and it’s a worldie.
The best shot of the day was on the 17th green. Finn hit it long left. The pin’s tucked up on the left in a little hollow and he’s dead. The other guys are in the middle of the green on the right. Finn has hit this flop shot, from about 30 yards, and has landed it on the top of this mound. It has just got to the top and has just started to trickle down. We’re talking slow motion, end over end, and you’ve got Rory on his haunches, going ‘go on, go on!’
Shane’s giving it as well. Luke is giving it. Finn’s the amateur of the group, this thing has rolled down to six inches, but you’ve got the three of them giving every bit of support to his golf ball rolling down to the hole.
Finn: The pin was in a bit of a weird position, in a little bowl. I’d never seen it there before, to be honest, but I pulled the tee shot left and it was blind and then a hump. I thought, if I land it on top of the hump it will run down to maybe 10 feet.
I’ve not fully connected with it, and it’s just trickled over this little bank. Apparently, it stopped about five times on the way down and then kept going and then went to nothing. It was a nice moment, and I had a good reaction from everyone watching.
And then comes one more reminder of exactly who is standing on the 18th tee…
Tim: I’m up on a little dune and I’m seeing the tee shots come in one by one. I’ve seen one land, another’s gone about 20 yards further, and I didn’t pick up one of the tee shots. I’m looking around and can’t quite see it. So I get up a little bit higher, through the mounds and the undulations of the 18th, and I see this one like 60 yards up there. Well, that can probably only be one person. I took a moment to stand there, and Rory walks past my right shoulder. He whacks his bag down and I just think, ‘That’s a proper hit’. I’ve never seen a golf ball up that far. He zapped it and I think he said he had 72 yards.
He hit his shot, picked his bag up, and this little boy, who couldn’t have been any older than seven, said: ‘Rory, did you just hit that drive 400 yards?’
Rory picked his bag up, turned to him, looked at me, and went ‘Yep’, and carried on walking. That little engagement was just awesome.
Michael: He could have thrown it on the green.
Finn: We all had nines in – sort of 140 or 150 yards – and Rory was just flicking away. I don’t think people had seen anybody hit from there before.
As the group approach the clubhouse, the scale of the occasion is impossible to miss. What is remarkable isn’t just that three iconic golfers have played the course. It is how they have played it and how they have been received…
Finn: It was amazing. [All the] people in the clubhouse – probably my favourite place in front of a lot of people, loads of mates. It was really special walking up the 18th, and then those three obviously got surrounded for pictures. I stayed out of the way, but it was really cool. I removed myself quickly.
Tim: It was 10 minutes of people saying, ‘Could I please? May I?’ And they were absolutely fabulous. Photos, signatures, just doing that little bit. It was wonderful. But when they put their golf clubs down in the same spot they did outside the changing rooms, in that moment, they were golfers at a golf club again. They’ve got changed, walked through the bar, they’ve got a wonderful spot on the balcony at the top of the clubhouse, and they’re sitting, everyone left them to it, and they’re enjoying the golf club.
Michael: Rory said he loved it: a great golf course, the greens were superb and [he was] very complimentary. Shane Lowry was completely blown away by it all and just loved every minute of it.
I thought, ‘That’s going to be the crowning glory of my captaincy’. It was completely unexpected and unplanned.
Enodoc can be – typical Cornish, really – understated. If Luke Donald turns up now, nobody bats an eyelid. If Thomas Detry turns up, it’s just, ‘He’s going out today’.
Thomas was in the clubhouse. He said: ‘Is there something on?’ I said, ‘There is something. You could say that’.
So he was laughing and then you had Lord David Cameron around on the putting green.
It was certainly a moment for me that I won’t forget. You don’t get to shake the hand of a World No. 1 on a very regular basis. As captain of Enodoc, it’s a privilege to be able to meet so many nice people coming from all over the world. But when we talk about Rory… Rory is something a bit different.
Chris: You can’t beat it, can you? You’ve got the current Ryder Cup captain, a Grand Slam winner, and Shane Lowry [an Open champion]. You’re not going to be able to top that.
William: It was more than a pleasure; it was an honour. I’m a custodian of this golf course, trying to look after it for future generations, and to have the class of golfer that came round and played that day was just exquisite. It was a fantastic moment.
It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done. It’s the biggest thing this club’s ever seen. But the best thing about it was there was so little notice. It wasn’t like we were building up to it for three or four weeks. We had 12 hours’ notice and we still produced a fantastic golf course for them to play, which they really enjoyed.
Finn: I think I did well just trying to enjoy it, remember it, and knowing it’s as good as it gets – playing with three of your heroes at your favourite course. It is something I will remember for a long time. It was amazing.
Some days are memorable because of a score, others because of a single shot. And some because, for a few hours, you’re just lucky enough to be there. No one at St Enodoc will forget this day…
Listen to The NCG Golf Podcast
Tom Irwin is joined by St Enodoc Head Professional Nick Williams for a fascinating look back at almost 46 years in golf.
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