Phil Takes Shots At Rory And Graeme McDowell About The Lawsuit They Have Against Each Other
Love it. And I really mean that. I don’t like that Phil is tossing around trash talk, I love it. The Ryder Cup is the fucking best and this is exactly why. Trash talk city. Player’s pouring salt in the opposing team’s wounds at press conference and laughing about it. Do you think any golfer would bring up the lawsuit between Rory and Graeme McDowell at a normal golf tournament? Absolutely NOT. That would be wildly inappropriate but at the Ryder Cup, everything is fair game. Even lawsuits that put a huge strain on a friendship and made things weird between two golfers who once loved playing with one another.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the Rory/Graeme lawsuit, here’s a quick summary from Golf.com
The latest twist in the bitter, high-stakes legal battle between Rory McIlroy and his former management company, Horizon Sports, came Tuesday when a judge urged the two sides to settle their differences out of court because of the “sensitive” involvement of McIlroy’s Ryder Cup teammate Graeme McDowell, who is still represented by Horizon Sports but who plans to sever ties at the end of this year. McIlroy has alleged that McDowell received more favorable contract terms from Horizon despite being promised that he and McDowell would have similar deals. To bolster McIlroy’s case, his lawyers have requested confidential documents relating to McDowell’s contracts with Horizon, which troubled the presiding High Court judge, Justice Brian McGovern. “The case has all sorts of sensitivities involving two players on tour, a manager of one of them and a former manager or agent of the other,” McGovern said. “It has all sorts of complex issues involving relationship matters.”
So basically Rory thinks he wasn’t treated fairly by his former management company, he thought Graeme got better treatment and Rory wanted to see normally-confidentail pieces of Graeme’s contract to prove his case. That’ll make things a bit awkward between two people, huh?. Not to mention Rory and Graeme were a big piece of the 2012 Ryder Cup when they were paired together.
So then today Phil fired off the “We don’t litigate against each other and that’s what makes the Americans play better together” bullets. Bullets that for sure stung because all people could talk about leading up to the Ryder Cup was what the dynamic between Rory and Graeme would be once they got there. They put on a good face for the cameras saying everything was all good but it’s not all good. They’re lying. There’s hurt feelings and Phil just wanted to twist the knife a little bit. Great stuff.
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!