McIlroy's wisdom in pulling out of Honda Classic called into question

Golf Correspondent

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Only in these bewildering times could a tooth become a celebrity figure.

Rory McIlroy reacts after hitting his ball into the water during his second round in Florida last week. Picture: Doug Murray/Reuters

Custom byline text:

Nick Rodger

Yes, in the wake of clumping off the course midway through his second round in the Honda Classic at the weekend, one of Rory McIlroy's gnashers has become something of a worldwide phenomenon.

It's the not so classic case of making a mountain out of a molar hill and goodness knows where we go from here. Expect to see the said tooth featured in a glossy magazine spread or sitting on Oprah Winfrey's couch chatting candidly about the time it first experimented with flossing.

The complex business of dental procedure could be dumbed down to a whole new level and shameless television executives are probably sitting around a table as we speak, hastily thrashing out plans for a series of I'm A Cavity . . . Get Me Out Of Here in which pointless personalities undergo a variety of eye-watering oral operations without a local anaesthetic. The mind really does boggle.Nowhere has the reaction been more boisterous to McIlroy's tooth-related treachery than on the good old internet. The online jury have harrumphed and cackled uncontrollably, passing instant judgment and derisory comment like there's no tomorrow while all the time remaining oblivious to the fact that McIlroy's life is about 10 million times more exciting than Mr Average-and-Opinionated.The young Northern Irishman has reached the pinnacle of his sport and has entertained the worldwide masses while the miserablists sit, indolently, on the sofa, tweeting, blogging and texting with their jabbing, podgy fingers about what a "quitter" and a "disgrace" he is. Who's the pitiful figure in that equation, pray tell?Of course, trudging off the course mid-round is one of golf's cardinal sins and, having told a gathering of reporters in the immediate aftermath that he was "in a bad place mentally", he later stated that he was in a bad place dentally with a "sore wisdom tooth".Failing to finish a round, at any level of the game, tends to go down like a sack of spanners and McIlroy will know that. When Sandy Lyle threw in the towel after 10 holes of a torrid first round during the 2008 Open at stormy Royal Birkdale, the backlash against the 1985 champion was furious and some even suggested that the whole episode prevented him getting a crack at the Ryder Cup captaincy.In November 2011, John Daly battered six balls into a lake on the 11th hole of his first 18 in the Australian Open and promptly quit, a decision that led to him, essentially, being outlawed in Oz.McIlroy is golf's world No.1, the bright young ambassador who is carrying the game into a new era and inspiring the next generation. His every move is scrutinised and, in these times of 24-hour news and unrelenting rapid-fire updates on social media, there is simply no escape from the peering eyes and the pointing fingers.The spotlight shining down on him became brighter when he was unveiled as the multi-million dollar face of Nike and the fact that he missed the cut in his first outing with the new sticks in Abu Dhabi, then lost in the first round of the WGC Accenture Matchplay Championship before the weekend's palaver at Palm Beach has only added to the pressure. McIlroy is now trying to justify that decision to switch equipment when almost everyone is questioning it and the carefree approach to the way he played the game, a style of golf which propelled him to the top in the first place, has tightened up over these early weeks of the new campaign.As a professional, McIlroy should not have quit, sore tooth or not. Tiger Woods won a US Open with a shattered knee remember, while the Swedish golfer Daniela Holmqvist was bitten on the course by a deadly Black Widow spider during a qualifier for the Women's Australian Open recently but cut her ankle open with a tee, squeezed the venom out and ploughed on.If things are not going right, you can't just throw the toys out of the pram. Bad days and bad scores are par for the course in this infuriating game. Hindsight is a great thing, of course, and it's easy to sit and pass comment. We will never understand how it feels to be a 23-year-old global superstar who is fighting a crisis of confidence. One minute you're being deluged by torrents of acclaim, the next a worldwide mob is demanding you be put in stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables.It's a fickle business and golf, more than any other sport, is awash with holier-than-thou attitudes and goading piety. Last season, McIlroy missed three cuts in a row against a backdrop of jaw-dropping hysteria, but roared back to win the US PGA by eight shots before going on to top the money lists on both sides of the Atlantic. He's dealt with knee-jerk reactions before and will, no doubt, deal with them again.McIlroy is the best thing that has happened to golf in years and the way that he has handled himself during this rise to exalted status, both on and off the course, has been exemplary. Let's not be too hard on him.

Contextual targeting label:

Education

Commenting & Moderation

We moderate all comments on HeraldScotland on either a pre-moderated or post-moderated basis. If you're a relatively new user then your comments will be reviewed before publication and if we know you well then your comments will be subject to moderation only if other users or the moderators believe you've broken the rules, which are available here.

Moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours. Please be patient if your posts are not approved instantly.

McIlroy's wisdom in pulling out of Honda Classic called into question

Commenting & Moderation

MOST READ

SPONSORED LINKS

MOST COMMENTED