Rory McIlroy's Portrush gesture completes one man's 19-year journey to replace what was lost

The Journal

6 days ago

The 42
IT'S MONDAY AFTERNOON in the media centre at Royal Portrush, and for once the question to Rory McIlroy is a little more interesting than the answer.
Q: Rory, in 2006 at the Dubai Desert Classic you were a 16-year-old amateur playing with Peter O'Malley and Robert Coles. I was also a 16 year old, and I was also your scorer that day.
A: No way!
Q: You told me that day that your two goals were to be the World No. 1 golfer and to complete the Grand Slam. When you're an elite golfer as you are, one of the best of the generation and achieve your lifelong dream like that, what is the process of resetting your goals look like?
The man asking that question was David Bieleski. He was at the Open for the week as an accredited member of the media, working for the New Zealand-based radio station, Sport Nation.
David was born in New Zealand but went to school in Dubai, and it was from this school that volunteers were drawn for the annual Dubai Desert Classic event on the European Tour.
As one of the few in his school who actually played golf, the tournament's head scorer usually rewarded him with the marquee group of the event.
Rory McIlroy, pictured in 2006.
Morgan Treacy / INPHO
Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
When he was handed his group in 2006, however, David recognised only two of the three listed names. While he knew tour regulars O'Malley and Coles, he knew nothing of the young amateur. He sought out the head scorer and asked him what was the deal, and was told that he was given the best group on the course, because that young amateur would be the best player in the world some day.
As idle conversation unspooled with the round, David asked the young amateur for his ambitions in golf, to which the young amateur replied, slightly abashed, that he wanted to win all four major championships and become world number one.
After he completed his round, the young amateur signed his golf ball and handed it to his scorer, a custom he maintains to this day.
David pocketed the ball with the sense that this was one worth keeping, and so he and Rory McIlroy went their separate ways.
Eight years later, Rory McIlroy was 24 and halfway to fulfilling the ambitions he confessed to his scorer at the Dubai Desert Classic. He had been world number one and had won two major titles, and he'd add another two – one of them a Claret Jug – before that year was out.
School days: David Bielski with Lee Westwood during his time as a volunteer at the Dubai Desert Classic.
David Bielski
David Bielski
David Bieleski was 24 too, but dealing with a much nastier lie. He was an alcoholic, and he was homeless too.
He returned to Auckland after school, where he lapsed gradually, and then suddenly, into drinking. His alcoholism, he says, did not fit the wrongheaded cliché of a man in a trench coat drinking on a park bench from a paper bag: his was hiding insidiously in plain sight.
He didn't drink in the mornings and he didn't drink in public parks. He drank socially, but when he drank, he did so to get drunk. It ticked upwards: he went out three, then four, then five nights a week, tactically going out with different friends or groups of people who would not so easily spot the frequency. He shunned the problems this all threw up, simply drinking more to escape and numb the feeling.
The nights of excess gave way to mornings of shame, from which the only escape route was another night of excess. David would wake up, vomit over the toilet, potentially vomit again in the shower, and then muddle through the day before going out again that night to start the cycle all over again.
'It was a constant battle of chasing the feeling and ideal state of being through the use of alcohol,' he says, 'and then being wracked with guilt and shame for having let people down, and then doing it all again as a result.'
He struggled to hold down a job, constantly ran short of money, and saw friendships and relationships fray at their seams.
Then, in 2014, another night's drinking ended up with David getting into a fight, causing damage to property, and being sent to hospital and a jail cell. This was not the first time his night ended this way, but for the first time, he broke the cycle in the morning. After he was released, David stood in front of the bathroom mirror to wash his face and, for the very first time, he could not look himself in the eye.
'It was a rare moment of clarity,' he says, 'where I realised that I could either keep what I was doing and experiencing similar results, or I could be brave and try something different.'
This was one week before the birth of his daughter, and so he resolved that she would never see her father drunk. David went to rehab but ran out of money, and so spent eight months living in a homeless shelter as he bid to get sober.
And he did it. Within nine months he got a job as a travel agent, and was soon on a flight from New Zealand to Las Vegas for an awards ceremony as one of the company's top performers. He met a girl, Sophie, and they stayed together when she was posted from Wellington to Christchurch for work. With the added free time, David indulged his old passion for golf.
He started blogging, his first post being a 2,000-word preview of, you guessed it, the Dubai Desert Classic. It gained traction, and he continued to blog until he was paid to write about golf, from where he moved into broadcasting with Sport Nation.
And so David Bieleski has been sober for more than 11 years.
'The peculiarity with alcoholism is that many people can handle alcohol perfectly well and have the ability to say no or they've had enough,' he says. 'You'd never turn around to a diabetic and wonder if they can have a little bit more sugar. Society struggles to understand that we can't approach alcohol the same way.
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'If I'm drinking, I'm drinking for the effect and to get drunk. Otherwise, what else is the point? If one drink is good, then six, eight, 12 will be even better. It is a disease, and research estimates around 10% of the population have the genetic predisposition towards alcoholic drinking. I personally believe I always had a predisposition for addiction.'
Which brings us to Royal Portrush.
At one point along his hard road, David lost the golf ball gifted to him by Rory McIlroy, and once he got sober, his mind became fixated on where it had got to. 'It's something I thought about an unreasonable amount,' he says, 'What has happened to this golf ball?
'That memento reminded me of the happiest times of my life: my childhood.'
The lost ball was an emblem of all that which David squandered in his drinking days, and so recovering it might provide a measure of apology to his younger self, and of redemption for the life he hadn't led.
He scoured his history to find it. He went back to the places he had lived and stayed during his drinking days, pleading with whomever he found to look for the ball. He returned to the house in which he most suspected he had last seen it, and found his former housemate had died. He was an alcoholic too.
It was all to no avail. Nobody knew where it was, and nobody could find it. The ball was lost and that fact seemed to prove that while we can all move on, we cannot always make amends.
Earlier this year, Rory McIlroy fulfilled the last promise he made to David Bieleski by winning the final major tournament missing from his collection.
McIlroy completed his journey's arc so David figured he might too.
He flew to Cornwall, where he proposed to Sophie.
Meanwhile, he asked two of his golfing school friends from the Dubai days to travel to Portrush: he told them he was proposing to Sophie beforehand, and he wanted a stag party. And, hey, some live golf is as good an idea as any other for an alcoholic's stag.
But while his friends were among the galleries, David had access to the media centre, where his path finally again intertwined with Rory McIlroy.
On Sunday evening, McIlroy gave the raucous crowds wreathing the 18th green one final wave and disappeared beneath the grandstands, on his way to the scoring tent and then an interview room with journalists. As McIlroy spoke with us, David peeled away from the pack and spotted Rory's caddie, Harry Diamond, standing outside. He sidled over and plucked up the courage to tell him his story.
When McIlroy finished up his media duties, he bounced down the four steps leading to the elevated interview platform and swung right to rejoin Harry and walk back to the clubhouse on their way out of Portrush. As he did so, the PA address system heralding Scottie Scheffler's victory drifted overhead.
Harry stood with David and introduced him to Rory.
David explained his journey, telling Rory of how he had inspired him to complete his own journey. Harry produced a golf ball and sharpie, and handed both to Rory.
Rory signed the golf ball, squeezed David's arm, and then handed it over saying, 'Well then, this one is even better.'
David walked away, his knuckles clutched so tight they were as white as the golf ball within them, all the while failing to fight back great, heaving tears.
He found a quiet spot and slipped the ball into a Titleist box, to officially begin its transit back to New Zealand, where it will take up residence in his home with Sophie, his daughter and his two cats, whose names are Gary and, of course, Rory.
The ball will be set upon a tee, framed and put upon his mantlepiece, where it will stand alongside a picture of McIlroy on his knees on the 18th green at Augusta National that bears the man's own message.
Never give up on your dreams.
David Bieleski completes his journey with a signed ball from Rory McIlroy.
David stayed to listen to Scottie Scheffler's press conference, and quietly agreed with Scheffler's outlook that life is ultimately about identifying the truly important things.
I went to listen to Scheffler too, and met David as we were filing our way out of the room. I had seen his interaction with McIlroy and my curiosity had gotten the better of me, and so we sat down to talk.
About an hour later, I packed up my bags and as I climbed the hill that led down from the media centre to the back of the 18th green, beneath the honeyed sunset in front of me I saw David Bieleski, arm-in-arm with his two friends, telling them he had a golf ball signed by Rory McIlroy and that, today, he had righted a wrong.
You can follow David's work
at DeepDiveGolf
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this piece, you can
visit Drinkaware.ie
Written by Gavin Cooney and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won't find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women's sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe
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