Rory McIlroy says professional golfers are “well within our rights” to skip media duties as he admitted he was left “annoyed” by a story regarding his equipment at last month’s US PGA Championship.
The Masters champion said a combination of tiredness, poor play, wanting to see his daughter and reports of his driver failing a legality test contributed to his decision not to speak to reporters after each of his four rounds at the year’s second major.
After winning at Quail Hollow, Scottie Scheffler revealed his driver had also been deemed non-conforming in pre-tournament tests carried out by the United States Golf Association (USGA), but McIlroy was unimpressed that his name – and not the American’s – was reported by the media during the Northern Irishman’s second round.
“It was supposed to stay confidential,” said McIlroy, speaking to reporters for the first time since that event at this week’s Canadian Open.
“Two members of the media were the ones that leaked it. I didn’t want to get up there and say something that I regretted either because there’s a lot of people that I’m trying to protect: Scottie, I don’t want to mention his name, I’m trying to protect TaylorMade [the manufacturer], the USGA, the PGA of America, myself.”
At Quail Hollow, PGA of America’s chief championships officer Kerry Haigh said non-conforming drivers are “not an unusual occurrence”.
Haigh said the results are kept secret to “protect players”, adding: “To publicly identify players whose club did not conform can lead to that player being questioned unnecessarily.”
“With Scottie’s stuff, that’s not my information to share. I knew that that had happened, but that’s not on me to share that,” added five-time major winner McIlroy.
“That process is supposed to be kept confidential and it wasn’t for whatever reason so that’s why I was pretty annoyed at that.”
