Young gun in line of fire

After a stupendous last season, Rory McIlroy has hit a rough patch, raising concerns over his mindset

Applause drowned out the pulsating music last Tuesday night as Rory McIlroy made his way to the X taped to the carpet in the resort ballroom. McIlroy, wearing jeans, a dress shirt and pointy-toed shoes, had just been introduced as the first global brand ambassador for Bose, an audio equipment company.

It was a timely merger of man and machine. If anybody needed noise-cancelling headphones to tune out the world, it was McIlroy, whose slow start in 2013 has generated criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.

On Friday he set more tongues lashing by abruptly withdrawing from the Honda Classic after completing eight holes of his second round. It was the first time in 55 starts as a professional on the PGA Tour that he withdrew during a tournament.

McIlroy returned this week to PGA National Resort and Spa seeking to become the 41-year-old tournament’s only back-to-back champion besides Jack Nicklaus. Instead, the event led to his latest disappointment since he made the highly lucrative but risky move of changing his equipment from Titleist to Nike at the beginning of the year.

The early returns have not been promising: he missed the cut in Abu Dhabi in his season debut, switching to his old putter in the second round, and lost in the first round last week in a World Golf Championships match-play event outside Tucson.

The week of his title defence began with McIlroy brushing off criticism in the news media in the United States and the United Kingdom over his equipment change. “It’s not like I’m pushing for answers or I’m looking for answers,” he said. “Everything’s there. It’s just a matter of putting it all together.”

Asked if reporters were making too much of it, he laughed and said: “Of course. Like you always do with everything.”

McIlroy was not laughing Friday when he walked off the course after depositing his second shot on his ninth hole, the par-5 18th, into the water. It was his third wet ball of the day, and he stood at seven-over after eight holes.

He left the grounds without offering an explanation, the first indication that the intense scrutiny that goes hand-in-hand with being golf’s global brand ambassador is darkening McIlroy’s sunny disposition.

Ernie Els and Mark Wilson, who were paired with McIlroy, were unaware of any physical distress that would have prompted him to retire from the tournament. McIlroy gave no hint of a problem before his round, posting on his Twitter account Thursday night a photograph of a birthday dinner for his mother, Rosie.

An hour after his withdrawal, in a statement released by his managers, McIlroy said he was bothered by a sore wisdom tooth that did not respond to a pain reliever.
“It was very painful again this morning, and I was simply unable to concentrate,” he said.
McIlroy added, “This is one of my favourite tournaments of the year and I regret having to make the decision to withdraw, but it was one I had to make.”

There is no manual for the care and maintenance of a global brand, as evidenced by the awkward handling of McIlroy’s withdrawal. Since ascending to No. 1 with his win here last year, McIlroy has tailored his tournament schedule to give himself time to recharge; hired Michael Bannon, his longtime coach and a club pro, to work with him full time; and relocated to Palm Beach County, Fla., where the sun shines brightly but the spotlight is not quite as hot.

McIlroy, who bought a multimillion-dollar home in a gated community five miles from PGA National Resort and Spa, said the local populace largely left him alone.
“Palm Beach is a bit like that,” he said. “Everyone is wealthy in their own right, and they think they’re important, and they’re caught up in what they’re doing.”

McIlroy’s Nike deal is worth tens of millions of dollars, but nobody who has spent time around him believes that was his motivating factor in making the switch.

“I truly believe he didn’t leave Titleist for any money reasons,” Wilson said. “He just wants to be with a company that represents some of the best athletes in a lot of sports.”
McIlroy, however, seems to be struggling. At this event last year, he was one of two players to shoot in the 60s in all four rounds. In his even-par 70 round Thursday, McIlroy took 30 strokes on the greens and made a bogey 6 at the 18th after he hit his second shot to 105 yards from the pin.

Talking to reporters afterward, McIlroy spoke more softly than usual. Somebody suggested that he sounded deflated.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, adding, “Wasn’t the nicest finish.”

Before Friday’s fiasco, McIlroy had demonstrated why so many in the golfing world and global marketplace regard him as a golden asset. Wednesday’s pro-am was one of two pretournament events that McIlroy, as the defending champion, was obligated to take part in. Fifty-two teams of four amateurs paid $28,000 for the privilege of playing with a pro from a field that included 10 of the top 20 players in the world.

At the pro-am draw party Tuesday night, suspense built as a giant video board paired teams with pros in a kind of electronic shuffle until only McIlroy and Tom Amanti’s foursome were left.

Amanti, the president of a Massachusetts-based mechanical construction company, has participated in the pro-am since 2007, he said. This year he played with two of his children, Steve, 30, and Diane, 23, a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After greeting his amateur partners on the first tee Wednesday morning, McIlroy took his phone out of his back pocket and surreptitiously sent a text message. On the first fairway, while waiting to hit his approach, and again on the green, McIlroy took the phone out and, cradling it in his right hand, texted with his right thumb.
“My caddie said, ‘I bet he’s texting his girlfriend,”' Diane Amanti said, “and I said, ‘That’s OK.”'

On the other side of the world, his girlfriend, Caroline Wozniacki, the 10th-ranked tennis player, was not OK. She had lost in the first round of a tournament in Malaysia, falling in three sets to a Chinese qualifier who was ranked 176 spots below her. McIlroy knew Wozniacki had been feeling unwell, he said later, and he wanted to check in with her before she went to sleep.

At the conclusion of the pro-am, Tom Amanti proclaimed McIlroy an “honorary Amanti” and said, “This is my seventh year playing in this, and he’s by far the most friendly and outgoing pro we’ve played with.”

His daughter was more effusive. “I don’t think anything is going to top this,” she said.
It can be easy to forget that McIlroy is only 23. Last year, at 22 years 10 months, he became the youngest winner of this event. The challenge for him this week was to somehow top last year’s performance, when he staved off a late charge by Tiger Woods to win his third tour title and reach his lifetime goal of becoming No. 1. But he was forced to withdraw on Friday.

Walking off the course in the middle of a round is rare, but Woods has done it twice in the last two years, most recently during a dismal final round at the 2012 Doral tournament when an Achilles tendon injury flared.

“I’m a great fan of Rory’s, but I don’t think that was the right thing to do,” said Els, a four-time major winner and the 2008 Honda Classic champion. He added: “Hey, listen, if something was bothering him, you know, it was bothering him, and all credit to him for trying to play through whatever pain he was in. He obviously couldn’t do it after nine holes anymore. Toothache, it’s not fun, I guess.”

Among tournament officials and McIlroy’s legions of fans and sponsors, of course, the fervent hope is that his sore wisdom tooth was what was bothering him and not something with deeper roots.