Rory McIlroy offered perspective on whether PGA Tour players should always speak to media

Rory McIlroy won The Players Championship a few weeks ago and in the process threw kerosene on the fire of hope that many have for him slipping on the iconic green jacket this year.

We have officially arrived at that fateful week, Masters week, and whether or not it is finally Rory’s time to complete the career grand slam remains to be seen. Rory met with the media from the grounds in Augusta on Tuesday and referenced something that happened during his win at TPC Sawgrass, something he had nothing to do with.

As the Players was unfolding, Collin Morikawa, in his own media rounds at the time, was asked (this is all very ironic, I understand) about not speaking to the media following his final round at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. What is particularly notable about Bay Hill is that Collin lost down the stretch, in some heartbreaking fashion, to Russell Henley.

Morikawa chose to get out of town without speaking to the media and in the process created a story all about it, another twist of irony. While Rory was on his way to winning at Ponte Vedra, he did in fact deploy the same approach to the media that Collin did when he lost the U.S. Open to Bryson DeChambeau last year at Pinehurst.

All of these topics came to a head during Rory’s media session at Augusta. He noted, correctly if we are being literal, that the players on the PGA Tour hold no technical obligation to speak to the media following their rounds in the way that other professional athletes do.

Debates like this pop up from time to time across the spectrum of sports. As they are in fact sports... they are naturally emotional. Consider the Houston Cougars as a recent example. It was surely not fun for Kelvin Sampson or members of his squad to talk to anybody following their nail-biting loss to the Florida Gators during Monday night’s National Championship. Nobody wants to talk after losing. That is humanity. We can all understand that.

The response to this notion is often that the players “owe” responses for their performance to people. This is a matter of extreme subjectivity and I am personally someone who likes to lean on the letter of the law and in this case... Rory and Collin have it on their side.

But if we are having the conversation in a way where we are looking to help everybody involved, it stands to reason that Rory and Collin (and whoever) should consider the overall impact of not speaking. This isn’t a call on them to do what they feel uncomfortable doing, but this is more specifically a note that we are still talking about Collin not speaking and Rory not speaking in the events that neither did. By choosing not to speak, for understandable reasons, both Morikawa and McIlroy inadvertently (perhaps knowingly) created entirely different stories for each of them to deal with that extended the level of discomfort that they were likely experiencing in the initial moments of it all.

Rory noted in his answer that the PGA Tour could look to consider incorporating a mandate in their rules for situations like this. Perhaps that would not be so bad of an idea. If that set of guidelines were to be in place then we could avoid these deep dives down rabbit holes that nobody cares all too much about. This particular one has taken us well beyond the actual game of golf and there are unfortunately too many things doing that nowadays anyway so the less of these issues we can have the better.