Rory McIlroy’s confident strut was going. He looked ready.
But don’t take our words for it.
Two of his own did the job.
After two rounds of the PGA Championship, McIlroy was at one over par, squeezing him into the weekend. But Saturday would maybe bring a run. He arrived early for his 8:25 a.m. ET tee time at Quail Hollow Club — but then they sounded the weather horn. Storms were in the Charlotte, N.C., area.
And McIlroy reacted as maybe you would, should you have been on the verge of setting out for a round.
Cameras picked it up. He lowered his head. He shrugged his shoulders. He smirked. He then said:
“F*** off.”
Our apologies for the colorful language.
As a result of a pair of stoppages, tee times were adjusted. When play eventually started, at 11:43 a.m., players went off in threesomes and off both the 1st and 10th tees. Some players weren’t affected much — the leaders were to start about an hour earlier. Some, like McIlroy and playing partner Xander Schauffele, had to adjust significantly.
They now had to start at 1:38 p.m. Put another way, they’d been at the course, and now they had to wait.
How would players like McIlroy respond? On ESPN, analyst Curtis Strange said they wouldn’t be happy.
“Going off early, perfect greens, soft conditions, no wind, you’re thinking I can get something going here,” said Strange, a two-time major winner.
“Maybe not when, but I can get something going possibly for the next week or the week after that. But now you have to go home and wait five hours, and it changes everything. It changes the outlook on the entire tournament.”
Would the overall day be affected?
“It doesn’t affect at all the leaders,” Strange said on ESPN. “They’re going off about the same time, same mentality, golf course, weather’s going to all be the same. It does affect the early starters, but it’s what you have to do to get the round finished.
“They’re going to finish today, whereas if they went off one tee, just delayed it two or three hours, it would go into tomorrow, and you never know about weather then. So they’ve done what is right. It’s just very, very unfortunate for a few that we’re going off early.”
Leave a comment