The Break: Royal Melbourne? Sign me up!

The Crown Australian Open is this week at Royal Melbourne, where the course will be the headliner along with Rory McIlroy.

Author

Ryan Ballengee
December 01, 2025

Royal Melbourne hosts this week

The Australian Double is two of my favorite weeks of the year. (RIP to the Aussie Triple Crown, which used to include the now-defunct Australian Masters.) You get the Aussie PGA, which has been elevated the last few years with co-sanctioning on the DP World Tour, BMW’s involvement and LIV Golf players trying to get OWGR points in these events.

What’s even better about these two events is that we get to watch golf in Australia. It’s a different look and feel down there, and it’s such a joy to watch. This week, at the Crown Australian Open, we the creme de la creme of Down Under hosts: Royal Melbourne in the Sandbelt.

If Royal Melbourne isn’t the best club on the planet, it’s darn close. Let's say top 5. Minimum top 10. The great part is that the club is willing to host big events on the reg and showcase their incredible 36-hole facility to the world. The composite course played this week in the Aussie Open is amazing and makes sure the golfing public gets the absolute best look possible at the Alister MacKenzie design.

While Royal Melbourne has hosted great amateur golf in the last few years, it hasn’t hosted a professional event since the 2019 Presidents Cup. It hasn’t hosted the Australian Open since 1991, and this is just the fifth time in club history that it’s hosted the national championship. Royal Melbourne also hosted the Heineken Classic from 2002-2005.

Rory McIlroy headlines the 156-player field, as the Masters champ looks to close out his year with a win and round out a globetrotting fall run that included a Ryder Cup win, a seventh Race to Dubai title and a trip to India to play the inaugural DP World India Championship.

If you live in North America, I strongly urge you to make some room in your late-night schedule to watch Royal Melbourne this week. It’s quite literally the primary reason I wrote the newsletter this week.

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Crown Australian Open: Field | History | Betting Odds | Purse

Hero World Challenge: Field | History | Rankings | Betting Odds | Purse

Nedbank Golf Challenge: Field | History | Betting Odds | Purse

Also, check out our series, Golfing In Indiana, on our website or on our YouTube channel. Brendan Sweeney and I went to nearly 20 public golf courses in the Hoosier State and had an absolute blast playing these courses all over Indiana.

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A Three-Peat for Scottie?

The PGA Tour silly season is here for a few events, and the best event goes first in the form of the Hero World Challenge at Albany in The Bahamas.

(Believe it or not, there’s a Twitter bot that specifically replies to tweets about the country and tells people that the “The” is supposed to be capitalized. I didn’t know!)

Scottie Scheffler is going for a three-peat in Tiger Woods’ event, leading the field of 19 players. JJ Spaun, Bobby Mac, Cam Young, Harris English, Hideki, Spieth, Keegan Bradley — lots of great players in this field.

The club has a handful of par 5s of various intigue levels, and the surrounds offer some challenge to the players. All you can really hope for as a viewer in this event is that the wind blows on Nassau.

We got to shoot The Road to French Lick at Atlantis this January, and it was my first time in The Bahamas for longer than a cruise stopover. It was wonderful. I’m hoping to get back down there and experience something a little more authentically Bahamian, but I won’t need much convincing to return.

In a world where the PGA Tour schedule may be cut drastically, an event like this may actually take on more significance in the years to come. Fans may occasionally complain about some tournaments on the official schedule, but if a substantial portion are jettisoned, then events like this one might draw even more eyeballs (and hopefully lead to a bigger field).