It wouldn’t be prudent to eat this for breakfast every day but it’s the end of a special week: normal rules, therefore, have been abandoned.
So here we are, in Skinner’s on Holywood’s High Street, waiting to get our hands on the treat that hit this bakery’s shelves early on Monday to recognise the historic feat of this town’s most famous son. It’s not a party unless there is cake and this one comes emblazoned with Rory McIlroy’s face.
‘The previous owners made them, when he won the Irish Open in 2016,’ says Graham McMorris, who has owned Skinner’s for five years with his wife, Jade. ‘I’d not seen the end of the Masters but once I knew Rory had done it, I wanted to bring them back. So we were in first thing making them.’
And he’s been making them ever since. By Friday, Graham had sold more than 2000 of them – they are like a biscuit with a middle layer of apple and raspberry jam, crowned with icing – but, most of all, taken enormous joy in being part of a moment in time for this genteel corner of Northern Ireland.
‘As soon as I was making them, the girls at the front of the shop were coming to take another tray off me,’ Graham continues. ‘I couldn’t go quick enough and it’s been like that every day. It’s been like a conveyor belt but do you know what? It’s been brilliant.
‘We’ve had people coming from all over. One guy came from Portadown (40-minute drive away) three times to get some. We’d sold out the first two days but he kept coming back. Another guy came from Newry (60-minute drive). My brother is in Australia, even he wants some sending!
Rory McIlroy made history at the Masters last week after completing a career Grand Slam
McIlroy arrived home to Belfast on Friday and was serenaded by his home city natives
Pictured: biscuits with an image of McIlroy’s face printed onto sugar, found at Skinner’s on Holywood’s High Street
‘It’s amazing for the area, it’s had a huge impact on everyone. Our daughter is six and she’s called Poppy, like Rory’s wee girl. When she saw the stickers coming out of the printer for the cakes, she said to me: “Here, Daddy – is that the golf fella?” She’s been watching it all on YouTube.’
She’s not the only one. We can broach the sporting side of this achievement in due course but to spend two days in Holywood – the place where it all began for McIlory – this week was to feel an overwhelming sense of pride. One man’s efforts have enabled a community, and a nation, to glow.
You can feel his presence as soon as you turn right off the A2 – ‘Welcome to Holywood,’ a big, blue signs proclaims. ‘Historical gem of the Lough and home of Rory McIlroy’ – and even more so when you walk down High Street.
McIlroy’s beaming smile is everywhere. He’s peering out of the Crafty Balloon Co, The Bay Tree Restaurant, Gary’s Barber Shop, Orr’s Butchers and Oasis Travel; a video from his Instagram feed, featuring the era-defining putt, is playing on loop in the window of Hooked, a boutique boxing gym.
‘The town is absolutely buzzing,’ says Jake McBride, the owner of Hooked. ‘Everyone is looking out for him, what he did for us was just fantastic. It would be great to see him if he comes back home, we’d welcome here with open arms.’
In total, 24 shops have specially-made posters from the council emblazoned on their windows, while there are other messages of support. One newsagents has a copy of Irish Golfer on display with the question posed on the front cover: Is 2025 Rory’s Grand Slam Year? We now know the answer.
McIlroy rarely returns home, so the thrill of his private jet landing in Belfast on Friday was palpable. He’s a global star, an icon with 8million followers on social media, but, to those who grew up with him, he’s the affable kid, who grew up with a shock of curly hair and wore garish trousers on course.
‘I knew Rory when he was young and he was winning things even then,’ John McCullough, owner of Art & Home, a boutique at the top of High Street. ‘When there were reports about him in the local newspapers, his Dad, Gerry, would come in and ask to get them framed.
McIlroy was born in Holywood, Northern Ireland and joined Holywood Golf Club at just seven
McIlroy became only the fifth golfer in the Masters era to complete the career Grand Slam
‘Rory would come in and have things framed that Sir Alex Ferguson had given him. Everybody around here has been willing him on. The thing we all know is that he’s always stayed humble, his family have never changed one bit. They’re a lovely bunch of people.
‘His Dad did everything he could for him. At the side of the garden in the house they used to live, his Dad turned the garden into a mini golf-course for him to practice whenever he could. His parents couldn’t have done anymore for him.’
It’s well known that Gerry and his wife, Rosie, worked every hour possible to have the finance in place to support their son’s quest for success but another fabulous story emerged again yesterday in the Belfast Telegraph about a windfall that proved very timely 20 years ago.
McIlroy won West Of Ireland Championship aged 15, he beat a 38-year-old called David Finn in the Final 2 & 1. It was an extraordinary triumph, achieved on Rosses Point Golf Course in Sligo; he had already won the Ulster Boys Under-18 Championship in 2003 but this was something else.
A chap called Dominic Rooney, who passed away in 2012, was the unofficial bookmaker for the event and he had a helper called Tom Gavin. Their book had looked good – lucrative, even – until Rooney scanned through and saw the wager Gavin had struck unbeknown to him.
‘I’ve given eights on a young fella called McIlroy,’ Gavin explained, proudly, unaware his judgement was going to be met with a volcanic response.
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ Rooney replied, the colour evidently draining from his face. ‘We’re ruined.’
The €100 each-way at 8/1 had been struck by Gerry McIlroy. The four figure return he received paid for young Rory’s travels that summer and sent him on a pathway, ultimately, to join a group that has only five other members.
Holywood proudly refers to itself as the ‘Historical gem of the Lough and home of Rory McIlroy’
McIlroy’s father Gerry (pictured above with him last year) and his wife, Rosie, worked every hour possible to have the finance in place to support their son’s quest for success
Holywood Golf Course runs parallel with Jackson’s Road, where McIlroy first lived. He could flop a sand wedge out of his front garden onto the eighth fairway, he was that close, and there wasn’t a minute he wasted on this undulating gem, with its picture postcard views.
Members still talk with wonder about how, as a 17-year-old, he was able to boom a drive from the 17th and carry it to the green, evading the brook that snakes in front of the putting surface. If you think that statement is run of the mill, think again when you learn it is 352 yards off the white tees.
On Friday morning, as the rain tumbled down, four young boys – who had watched the drama in Augusta last Sunday – were taking inspiration from a man who still has his own reserved space in the car park and who helped finance the remodelling of its new clubhouse.
At the top of the stairs, outside the restaurant where Japan’s Ambassador to Ireland was dining, there is a shrine to McIlroy with replica trophies of the USPGA, Claret Jug and US Open plus three of his golf bags from the Ryder Cups of 2010, 2012 and 2014.
Soon they will find space for a Green Jacket but the reverberations from Augusta have already been felt. Tom Widley, the General Manager, reveals there was a spike in membership applications on Monday while there is a waiting list to join Holywood’s juniors, which already numbers 200.
Whether McIlroy pops over the weekend remains to be seen – when he comes back, he tends to use the gym or the state-of-the-art simulator studios, rather than playing the course – but he will be around again, for certain, in July when The Open is held in Portrush.
‘There has been a buzz here all week,’ says Ciaran Lavery, the club professional, who extends the generosity of his time by stepping out on to the practice green while this correspondent painfully attempts three of the four-foot putts McIlroy converted; two drop – the last slithers away.
‘He’s the complete athlete. He’s done something that only one other guy has done in the last 60 years. It’s like a horse winning the Champion Hurdle, the Gold Cup, the Grand National and another big race on every surface from heavy to quick. This goes beyond golf.
There was a spike in membership applications at Holywood Golf Course after McIlroy’s win at The Masters last Sunday (pictured Mail Sport’s Dom King with a replica trophy of McIlroy’s)
McIlroy pictured with his daughter Poppy and wife Erica Stroll after winning the Masters
‘The phone in the shop this week has been ringing from everywhere asking: “Is he there? Can we come and meet him?” Someone said to me a few days ago: “How can people not like sport?” and I know exactly what they meant. Just look at what Augusta is, with its history – it’s vintage.
‘He’d won it, lost it then won it again. To do it how he did left us all extremely proud, delighted but also relieved. It was closure for him, he could exhale. We know it’s going to be Rory-mania the whole of Open week. We’re at 70 per cent occupancy for tee times already and it’s only the middle of April.’
The last word, though, is best saved for Bridie Sinden, assistant manager of the course’s restaurant. She grew up with McIlroy and his caddie Harry Diamond and, with beautiful articulation, explains the enormity of the career Grand Slam and what it all means.
‘It’s so nice to see a friend come good and it’s lovely for the focus to be on Northern Ireland for all the right reasons. He was focused, even as a boy. He’d tell us: “this is my dream and I will do it” The goal was always in sight. And he did it. It’s a Hollywood ending – made in Holywood.’
