Phil, Rory Demonstrate Their Repressed Baton-Twirling Skills
/For your incriminating photo files or those who just miss the days of Miss America pageant displays of baton-twirling prowess, Luke Kerr-Dineen posts several of Getty Images’ finest photos showing Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy fulfilling their appearance fee duties in Abu Dhabi. (The HSBC starts Thursday, with Golf Channel coverage in the U.S. commencing at 4 am ET.)
Earlier in the day, Mickelson spoke to the scribblers about the importance of this year’s Ryder Cup, the likelihood he is skipping both Riviera and the WGC Match Play while adding the Honda, and also plugged his new driver.
Steve Elling posted a synopsis and you can read the full transcript here. Doug Ferguson also wrote about Mickelson's new driver.
Ewan Murray summed up Rory's press session, where among other things, he "spoke expansively, if slightly bashfully, for the first time about his proposal to Wozniacki" and also had this to say about his distractions heading into 2014:
"I think it was a big deal. It was a big decision for me. I think it was a big thing for Nike. It was a real big step in my career but I guess I had so many things to try and think about or focus on; am I going to use this, am I going to use that, is this driver better than that one? There was a lot of instability.
"There was loads of stuff going on around me and that didn't let me focus 100% on what I needed to do, which was to try and play the best I could."
Regarding the engagement to Wozniacki, the Daily Mail's Derek Lawrenson says "the vast majority of people involved in both sports would declare, for there are few who have many bad words to say about this personable pair," then writes, "the overwhelming sentiment would be how satisfying that those malicious Irish gossip columnists were proved wrong."
The Daily Mail also wrote of the purported split with extensive quoting of sources.
The full McIlroy transcript is here.
