Rory McIlroy defends remarks about Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson getting old

Rory McIlroy went to Twitter Wednesday night to defend comments he made earlier in the day about Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson getting old and playing “the last few holes of their careers.”

In dropping the “O” word on Woods and Mickelson, the world No. 1 only said aloud what many others in and around the game have been thinking for some time: golf’s most popular but aging superstars are yesterday’s headlines.

“They’re just getting older,” McIlroy told reporters ahead of Thursday’s kickoff to the Tour Championship, from which Woods and Mickelson are conspicuously absent. “Phil’s 43 or whatever he is [actually, 44] and Tiger’s nearly 40 [he’ll turn 39 in December]. So they’re getting into the sort of last few holes of their career, and that’s what happens ... It obviously just gets harder as you get older. I’ll be able to tell you in 20 years how it feels.”

This week’s tournament — the fourth and final FedEx Cup playoff game — marks the first time since 1992 that at least one of the two megawatt personalities has not qualified for the season-ending tournament.

Mickelson, the reigning PGA champion said of the guy who finished second to him at Valhalla, has appeared “a little tired the last couple of weeks” — an assessment with which Lefty would likely agree.

“I’m barely keeping my sanity,” Mickelson, whose only top-10 finish in the worst season of his career came at the final major of the season, said after missing the secondary cut at The Barclays last month. “I’m so frustrated.”

It’s hardly a secret that Father Time has taken a toll on Woods, who has battled injuries since college and has lately conceded that his salad days were in the rearview mirror.

“I felt old a long time ago,” Woods said during the PGA. “It’s darn near 20 years out here.”

And it’s not as if the world No. 1 hasn’t been dropping hints for some time about his injury-plagued Nike stablemate having made the turn. During an appearance with Woods on Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” earlier this month, McIlroy’s use of the past tense to describe Woods’ on-course dominance caught the attention of many in golfing circles.

“I was just saying -- I mean if you go by present day, like he was dominant, he’s not playing at the minute. So he can’t be dominant if he’s not on the golf course,” the four-time major champion, somewhat haltingly, told SB Nation during the Deutsche Bank Championship two weeks ago. “His priority right now is to get healthy and to get stronger and fitter again to be able to swing the golf club the way he wants to. He’s giving himself until the end of the year, which I think that’s what he should do. He’s definitely highly motivated. I expect nothing less than him to come out next year and be playing well and get back to where everyone knows he can be.”

He expressed similar sentiments on Wednesday, saying of the winner of 14 major titles, “When he gets back to full fitness, you’ll see him back here again.”

Until such time, McIlroy has center stage and, channeling his inner Eldrick, said he expected victory come Sunday night.

“Anything other than a win here would be a disappointment,” McIlroy, who, at No. 4 in the playoff standings, has a chance to lift the FEC trophy and pocket its $10 million bonus with at least a T3 finish in this week’s 29-player field. “After I finished the PGA [Championship], all my focus was on the FedEx Cup and trying to win this.”