Wisdom: Rory's Tooth Sensed He Was Not Going To Break 90

Dave Shedloski reports on Rory McIlroy's sitdown with the assembled scribblers in Palm Beach Gardens, a year removed from the tooth pain that forced him to quit mid-round.

Though there's a new element to the story now, one that actually passed a smell test ever so briefly.

"You should never walk off the golf course, no matter how bad things are," said the former No. 1 player in the world. "It was just one of these days, I just felt like I couldn't cope with anything more, especially not the way I was heading. I was going to shoot 90 -- the last thing I needed."

Okay, so he's admitting he was having a bad day and wanted off the course. Great. And that's embarrassing too, right?

"It's not embarrassing because I think a lot of people in the same situation might have done the same thing," added the native of Northern Ireland, who promised he would react differently if confronted with similar adversity. "I've learned from it, and I've moved on. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't my finest hour, but at the end of the day, everyone makes mistakes.

I just hope he's had a good heart-to-heart with the wisdom tooth since the extraction. Or, if it's in his mouth still, talked to it in front of a hotel mirror with is mouth wide open?

The Golf Channel video from Palm Beach, where tables and microphones are in short supply.

Update on 2014-02-27 07:27 by Geoff

**Intriguing observations from Brian Keogh on the new sanitized Rory, including a rushed press conference at the Honda.

Removed from the formality of the interview room, he still happily answered a few additional questions as he strode down the corridor, through the pro's shop and out to the same cark park where he made his hasty exit 12 months earlier. 

As he said on that trip down the corridor, he is more mature, less naive and more experienced now. He's more worldly. Who could blame him from taking steps to put up more barriers and insulate himself from the world.

And yet one can't help feeling that the efforts to sanitise and control McIlroy have removed a lot of his essence. 

In becoming a little more Tigeresque, something precious has been irrecovably lost, chewed up by the modern media machine and corporate necessity.