GUI bask in reflected glory

ROLLO McCLURE remembers the first time he saw Rory McIlroy swing a club.

It was a Barton Shield event at Knock Golf Club outside Belfast and the newly-minted US Open champion was just 12 years of age when the Golf Union of Ireland’s current treasurer glanced across to the ninth.

“I looked back at this slip of a lad who played the most perfect approach to the green and of course it turned out it was Rory,” said McClure, whose home club of Malone is just 10 minutes or so down the road from Holywood.

McClure had heard of McIlroy long before he saw him. The prodigy had already won a world championship for his age grade two years before and he was yet to reach his mid-teens before the GUI began to take a hand in his career.

The prodigy’s amateur days were littered with success. He claimed the West of Ireland Championship, the Irish Close and the European Amateur Championship and figured in team events such as the Junior Ryder Cup, the Eisenhower Trophy and the Walker Cup. McClure went on a handful of team trips when McIlroy was on board and he recalls a level-headed youngster, a good team player who would later return home to watch his erstwhile teammates in action on the dirtiest of days long after he turned pro.

The GUI’s role hasn’t been forgotten, not even late on Sunday evening when, amid the madness and the multitudes, McIlroy took time out to thank the body and its many hands for their nurturing role during his junior and amateur days.

“That’s Rory,” said McClure. “He’s always been like that. He has always been grateful for the GUI’s help down the years and Pádraig (Harrington) is the same. Pádraig has thanked the GUI every time he stands on his feet.

“Rory is just such a lovely lad. I’m involved in a charity up here and I sold him for a fourball a year or two ago and he was just brilliant. He stayed hours, signed autographs for everyone. He was really great with the kids, especially. He is like the Pied Piper for the kids here.”

It isn’t just the kids who will be hoping to follow in his footsteps. The GUI has also helped mould the likes of Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke and hopes are high for the next generation which boasts talents like Ballymena’s Dermot McElroy and Rathsallagh’s Jack Hume.

There are no shortage of role models, McIlroy aside. Harrington’s three major wins stand as the pinnacle — for now anyway — while Graeme McDowell is yet another to have followed the path through the union to golf’s pantheon with his own US Open triumph last year.

“It must all do great things for Irish golf,” said the GUI’s honorary secretary Albert Lee. “Pádraig’s first win raised everyone’s spirits, then he won two more and then Graeme won last year but who knows where this lad will stop?

“To think he was representing Ireland at the Walker Cup only four years ago and now here is a world beater, incredible. It has all given an incredible lift to the amateur game here.”