Rory McIlroy Declines to Speak to Media Throughout Lackluster PGA Championship

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For all the talk about the major championship quest getting easier for Rory McIlroy after winning the Masters and completing the career Grand Slam, the lackluster week at Quail Hollow was always a possibility, too.

It just wasn’t discussed very much.

Lost along the way to completing a calendar-year Slam was also the idea that perhaps McIlroy might fall flat after a month of fanfare and adulation.

His results at the PGA Championship certainly suggest something was amiss as he finished with a score of 72 on Sunday, outside of the top 50 and done well before the leaders teed off.

McIlroy finished at 287, 3 over par.

Whatever it is that befell McIlroy this week is a mystery. In an unusual occurrence for him, he skipped talking to the media after each round of the tournament.

His opening-round 74 was understandably frustrating and it’s possible McIlroy was miffed on Friday as a report came out via SiriusXM PGA Tour radio that the five-major winner had his driver deemed non-conforming earlier in the week via random testing by the United States Golf Association.

The testing is supposed to be confidential but the fact that it got out and that the Masters champion was dealing with the fallout screamed for some sort of explanation. The PGA of America, which initially declined to comment, finally came out with a statement 20 hours later in which it explained that a third of the field was tested, as per its protocol, and that this is routine.

The bottom line is that high-end drivers can become non-conforming with one strike of the club. McIlroy knows this. The manufacturers know this. The governing bodies know this.

Not all the fans know or understand this.

McIlroy could have put it to bed with a couple of minutes of explanation on Friday night—or at any point over the weekend.

But it is his right to choose not to do so, and one of the most popular players in the game is going to get the benefit of the doubt. McIlroy is very good in interviews when he wants to be, which is a majority of the time. This was an unusual week.

For McIlroy to shoot three over-par rounds out of four at a place that Justin Thomas referred to as “Rory McIlroy Country Club” is somewhat surprising. It’s one of the reasons why McIlroy came in with so much hype after the Masters victory.

The 29-time PGA Tour winner has won here four times, including last year. It’s where he got his first PGA Tour victory in 2010. The vibes were so good surrounding McIlroy that it was easy to see why he was such a popular pick.

McIlroy began the tournament with a birdie at the 10th hole on Thursday then bogeyed the 11th and then had numerous issues the rest of the day. On Friday, after a strong start saw him get under par for the tournament through 10 holes—only to make four bogeys over the closing eight holes and need a nervy bogey at the 18th to make the cut on the number.

It’s fair to wonder if McIlroy had issues with his driver and couldn’t find a suitable backup? He didn’t take questions about it—nobody even knows for sure which driver was deemed non-conforming.

But he hit just 26 of 56 fairways for the week—only 10 of 28 through the first two rounds—and his strokes-gained approach was 66th out of the 72 players who made the cut.

“If I can just try to get the best out of myself each and every week, I know what my abilities are; I know the golf that I can play,” McIlroy said prior to the tournament. “And if I keep turning up and just trying to do that each and every week, especially in these four big ones a year, I know that I’ll have my chances.”

He never gave himself much of one this time, which happens in golf and might be understandable given the burden-lifting accomplishment of a month ago.

It’s McIlroy’s first finish outside of the top 20 since he tied for 25th at the Dunhill Links Championship last October and his worst finish anywhere since he missed the cut at the British Open.

That might be hard to remember, too. Since finishing second at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, McIlroy has been on an amazing run, with 12 top-five finishes worldwide including four victories.

McIlroy will now regroup. He’s expected to skip the Memorial Tournament in two weeks and play the RBC Canadian Open the week prior to the U.S. Open at Oakmont.

Perhaps a lackluster week was inevitable. It just didn’t seem like this was the time or the place.