Roundup: Rory Goes Dental

Doug Ferguson's AP report on the strange Friday WD by Rory McIlroy at the Bear Trap Classic and how it's just the cherry on top of the lad's 2013 sundae.

His abrupt departure only added to the sloppy start to his young season, and raised concerns with the Masters just more than a month away. In three tournaments, he has missed the cut in Abu Dhabi, lost in the first round of the Accenture Match Play Championship and withdrew after 26 holes at PGA National.

''His demeanor looks a little different,'' said Graeme McDowell, one of his best friends. ''I felt like he was a little off with his golf swing on the range. There were a few moans and groans coming from the bay next to me. It's normally a display. It's normally a clinic. It's superlatives coming from the coach and the caddie. That's the sign of a guy who's lacking a little technique in his swing and a little belief in his game.''

Brian Keogh features more of McDowell's comments and it's clear the former US Open Champ believes McIlroy is feeling intense pressure mixed with swing uncertainty more than an aching tooth.

Keogh also writes about McIlroy's round and makes clear that it wasn't pretty long before the wisdom tooth acted up.

He later claimed in a statement that he had a massive toothache but while McIlroy’s problems are indeed in his head, they are of the mental rather than the dental variety.

The troubled world No 1 slammed clubs as he hit two balls in the water in his first eight holes, racking up two bogeys, a double bogey and a triple bogey seven  to soar to seven over.

After carving his second to the lake at the par-five 18th - his ninth hole - he didn’t even bother to take a drop.

After shaking hands with playing partners Ernie Els and Mark Wilson he made a beeline for the car park and denied three times that he had any physical problems before driving away with his caddie JP Fitzgerald and coach Michael Bannon.

Michael Bamberger files one of those "when you put it that way" columns that makes it hard to feel for young Rory's tooth plight.

The Northern Irishman/Nike global ambassador meant that as we might use “filleted.” No defending champion—McIlroy won Honda last year in a thriller over Tiger Woods—playing with new clubs worth tens of millions of dollars wants to quit while he is playing his 27th hole. Especially when your parents are around. And you’re playing with a Hall of Famer. And you’re sleeping at home. And your agent and counselor (Conor Ridge) is in a Dublin maternity ward tending to his wife.

Kevin Garside in The Independent tries to be sympathetic but ultimately concludes that the WD was a huge blow to McIlroy's image.

The world was on his case the moment he chipped into a washing-machine on TV as a nipper. The Nike deal upped the ante 120 million notches. He is public property now. Quitting is not an option, toothache or not.

James Corrigan in The Telegraph is less sympathetic, saying that McIlroy is still young enough to get a pass that Tiger Woods would not get. But more importantly, with the Masters looming, it's hard to put McIlroy anywhere near the top of possible contenders.

What McIlroy plainly requires now, apart from a full-time media adviser, are competitive rounds. He has only two events left before the Masters. Once the anaesthetic wears off he should enter another tournament. His swing is woefully out of sorts and combine this with the unease which comes to everyone using new equipment – whether Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods – then the result, at best, is mediocrity. When it is then mixed with an urge to run away, it descends into embarrassment.

Randall Mell on the WD and Tiger's sympathetic take on the way news spreads now compared to when he was 23.

“I’ve been through it a long time,” Woods said. “But, also, this is a slightly different era, as well.”
Woods was speaking of the instantaneous spread of news through Twitter and blogs.

“You’ve got to think about it more before you say something or do something,” Woods said.

And the Daily Mail lumped Rory in with girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki's loss to the 186th player in the world the night before and as usual, ran plenty of photos of the Rory leaving the course unceremoniously.

They also questioned his story:

Tooth or not, there was something seriously affecting McIlroy’s wisdom. How bad can the pain be if you’re photographed in the middle of the 18th fairway tucking into a huge sandwich, for heaven’s sake?

The previous night, he had tweeted from his mum Rosie’s birthday party,  saying he was having a great dinner. Rory must be the first man in history to be in agony from a wisdom tooth and yet still have a healthy appetite.