Rory McIlroy says he regrets quitting Honda Classic

Rory McIlroy has said there was no excuse for walking off the golf course during the Honda Classic last Friday vowing never to do it again.

The world number one pulled out the tournament midway through the second round blaming sever toothache.

Speaking to the media ahead of this week’s WGC-Cadillac Championship, McIlroy admitted that he was wrong to pull out.

“Obviously I’ve had a lot of time to think about it,” he said.  “I realised pretty quickly that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

“No matter how bad I was playing, I should have stayed out there. I should have tried to shoot the best score possible, even though it probably wasn’t going to be good enough to make the cut.

“I regret what I did and it won’t happen again.”

Following his pull-out, McIlroy initially told reporters he was not in a “good place mentally” before mentioning the tooth pain later on, and he now says that both were factors.

“I wasn’t in a good place with my golf game,” he said. “Mentally, my head was all over the place.

“But, at the same time, I have been struggling with my lower right wisdom tooth for over a year.

“So, yeah, my tooth was bothering me, but it wasn’t bothering me enough to probably, you know, quit.

“At that moment in time I was all over the place and I just saw red.

“But there is no excuse for quitting. I feel like I let a lot of people down with what I did last week, and for that I am sorry.”

McIlroy is now hoping for a much-improved showing this week and he will be in a group with Tiger Woods and Luke Donald on Thursday and Friday at Doral’s Blue Monster course.