For the fourth day in succession, Rory McIlroy opted not to talk to the media after finishing his round at Quail Hollow, but this time, he signed his card and headed for the airport rather than his hotel.
A week that promised so much for the reigning Masters champion and world number two ended in relative silence, both on the course and off it. The cheers that accompanied his near-every move at Augusta National had dulled to mild applause by the time he was tapping in for a closing par on the 72nd hole, and a final-round of 72; one-over-par, his third of four rounds that were the wrong side of that mark.
Did he just not have it this week? Did being forced to swap out driver heads on the eve of the tournament throw his long game out of kilter? Was he feeling under the weather? Everybody is entitled to a certain degree of privacy, and if there are things going on in Rory’s personal life that he’d rather not discuss then that will always be his choice to make, but by declining to talk to the media after all four tournament rounds, every single question remains unanswered.
Perhaps he’s a little peeved that the fact that he was one of several players whose drivers crossed the threshold of conformity was leaked to a member of the press and that that member of the press chose to publicly announce it on Sirius XM radio. Is he shunning all members of the press as a result? Would the radio silence have persisted even if he’d played well and found himself on the first page of the leaderboard?
For somebody who’s been more open than most – arguably too open at times – and somebody who most members of the press hold in extremely high esteem, it’s an odd choice, and a regrettable one.
As a result, when he next tees it up – and assuming he doesn’t continue to evade the press – it’ll be a talking point. He’ll be asked about the driver, he’ll be asked about why he declined requests on four successive days, and he’ll be asked many other questions about this week at Quail Hollow.
Nobody plays well all the time, and Rory’s been the best player in the world for the first four months of this year. Whatever the reason, he just didn’t have it this week. It would’ve been easy to say just that, and to say that his driver gets tested occasionally and that it’s all part of the game.
Drivers aren’t unconforming when they’re put in the bag, but when they’ve been hit a certain amount of times, particularly with the velocity that the game’s biggest hitters hit them, the coating on the face starts to wear and they become ‘hot’.
The media members know this, and we’ve all pointed that out. There is nothing to suggest that the driver was unconforming when it was in his bag at Augusta National, or at the Zurich Classic, or even at Philadelphia Cricket Club last week.
But it’s a story for another day. Scottie Scheffler is today’s story. Perhaps all the Rory talk in the lead-up to and in the aftermath of The Masters lit a fire under the world number one, and maybe all the Scheffler talk that’s going to happen between now and the US Open at Oakmont will reignite the fire within McIlroy.
And maybe he’ll even tell us about it.
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