Rory McIlroy has taken himself off social media and publicly revealed his distaste following the tweet clash with Australian-born golfer Steve Elkington.
Elkington tweeted on June 17 that he felt McIlroy was disenchanted with golf and simply going through the motions while pocketing millions.
He is “so bored playing golf... without Tiger the threshold is prolly 4 majors with 100mill in bank”, Elkington tweeted.
A Twitter spat then followed with McIlroy quickly responding to the 54-year old Houston-based Elkington: “@elkpga More like 200mil... not bad for a ‘bored’ 28 year old... plenty more where that came from.”
And McIlroy attached to his tweet an image from his Wikipedia profile listing all his achievements.
McIlroy fired back again ‘questioning’ Elkington’s academic background when the Australian began a second tweet with the word ‘New’, a misspelling for ‘Knew’, according to the Northern Ireland star.
McIlroy had spoken about the controversy during the recent Travelers Championship in Connecticut but found himself drawn back to the matter ahead of the Irish Open at Portstewart starting Thursday.
McIlroy has some 3.15 million followers on Twitter but since the clash with Elkington has posted just three tweets and one of those was to congratulate good friend Brook Koepka on winning at Erin Hills.
However, it was not the nature of what was said by the Australian, who has lived most of his life in Houston, but that it was said by a fellow player and also a fellow winner of the PGA Championship.
“It’s not what was said. It was who said it,” said McIlroy.
Good friends
“Anyone that’s been in that environment should realise how hard golf is at times, and I think that’s the thing that got to me more than anything else.
“So, if that was written by a member of the media or something, I could let it slide, because I can sort of say to myself, they don’t really know how it is and they don’t know what you have to deal with.
“But a former player that has won a major and been successful; that’s sort of why it got to me and that’s why I sort of retaliated a little bit.”
The current world number four kick-started the week on Tuesday ahead of his defence of the Irish title night by hosting a Rory Foundation evening in Belfast with special guest, Pep Guardiola.
Guardiola then joined McIlroy, a devout Manchester United follower, on Wednesday as a member of his pro-am team.
“I was good friends with him, and then he picked the City job, so I don’t know,” said McIlroy smiling.
“But no, my relationship with Pep started at The Ryder Cup in 2012. He was there. That was sort of his sabbatical year from management. He loves his golf. He went to the Masters that year. Went to The Ryder Cup. Struck up a bit of a relationship.
“Actually Pep and my dad, basically, walked all three days together and my dad is a huge City fan at that time he was asking, Pep, when are you going to come manage City, and obviously he got his wish four years later I guess. That’s how it started.”
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