Rory McIlroy claimed his 21st career PGA tour victory at the Canadian Open, and the first thing he did was attempt to dunk on Greg Norman.
In a post-round interview with CBS, Rory said, “Yeah it’s really special. One more than you know who.”
Norman finished his career with 20 PGA Tour wins.
If that wasn’t classless enough, Rory then showed up in the press room and immediately said, “And one more than Norman.”
Rory earned $1,566,000 for his win, or $3.25 million less than Charl Schwartzel received after winning the LIV Golf London event.
Schwartzel was also far classier in his winner’s press conference.
Those who say, “but everyone on Twitter loved it.” Exactly. And Twitter is not real life.
Back in 2017, when Rory got into a late-night Twitter beef with former PGA champion Steve Elkington, the then 28-year-old actually screen-grabbed his wiki page to dunk on the Aussie, saying he’s made $200 million (not $100 million), and there’s more where that came from.” (Note: This is the same Rory who now laughably claims he doesn’t play for money.)
At the time, I wrote: “Now if you’re a millennial bro who lives in a world of memes and GIFs, you probably believe that Rory “totally destroyed” Elkington, like in “epic” fashion and stuff.
“But if you’re a public relations pro, or any reasonable adult for that matter, you most likely disagree with that analysis, and believe that Rory’s behavior was big negative for the $100M $200M brand (apologies to Rory).”
So who was right, me or the Twitter bros?
After sobering up, Rory realized he came off as a total tool, and announced he was quitting Twitter.
As far as Rory McIlroy’s involvement with social media goes, the honeymoon is over. The golfer handed over his Twitter account to his new wife and is forsaking social media altogether, at least for the time being, following a testy online exchange with former PGA Tour player Steve Elkington last month.
“I don’t need to read it,” McIlroy said Wednesday (via CNN) of criticism leveled at him on Twitter and other platforms. “It’s stuff that shouldn’t get to you, and sometimes it does.”
Rory will enter Boston as the favorite and hoping to break a lengthy winless streak in the majors, where golf’s biggest phony has been shut out since 2014.
Editor’s Note: As a commenter noted, McIlroy was clearly responding to Norman who called him “brainwashed” in a Washington Post interview. Although to be clear, Norman was responding to a question from the reporter about McIlroy’s criticism of his efforts with LIV Golf, so it was the Northern Irishman who threw the first verbal punch. Also, there is an important difference in critiquing when asked about someone else’s criticism in a recorded (not live) interview, versus unforced on LIVE TV.
The opinions expressed in this column are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of Pro Golf Weekly.
Surely that should have been added into this article as Rory’s comment comes more as direct response to what had been previously said about him.
Thank you. Note has been added.
-PGW
It was good smack, Norman is a prick!!!
I don’t fault anyone for going for the money, but be objective about it. Find out where the money is really coming from and what kind of future LIV presents, maybe Jeff Smith should go write for LIV and write from a position of knowledge instead of a petty no name journalist.
Agreed. Jeff is biased and does not like Rory (here here here here and so on) but does keep it straight in reports.
Joel Cook writes the recap without any bias.
-PGW Editor
Finally I will say Rory is very generous with his money and time to be fair.