Rory McIlroy has explained why he chose not to speak to the media at the PGA Championship, citing a range of different reasons. The reigning Masters champion exercised his right to skip interviews after finishing each of his rounds. He was also embroiled in a controversial storm after news of his driver failing a test was leaked by some news outlets.

It led to the PGA of America issuing a statement to confirm that such testing had taken place, but the results were to remain confidential. McIlroy was unhappy that his test results were leaked, given that Scottie Scheffler's driver also came up short. This was known to McIlroy but he chose to keep it to himself, given the results were not supposed to be made public.

Ahead of the Canadian Open, the 36-year-old explained that he did not speak to the media because he wanted to avoid saying something he would later regret. He was also keen to protect Scheffler and the other relevant parties by staying quiet.

"The PGA was a bit of a weird week," began McIlroy. "I didn't play well. I didn't play well the first day, so I wanted to go practice, so that was fine. Second day we finished late. I wanted to go back and see Poppy [his daughter] before she went to bed.

"The driver news broke. I didn't really want to speak on that. Saturday I was supposed to tee off at 8:20 in the morning. I didn't tee off until almost 2:00 in the afternoon, another late finish, was just tired, wanted to go home.

"Then on Sunday, I just wanted to get on the plane and go back to Florida. Yeah, look, and also the driver stuff... I was a little p***** off because I knew that Scottie's driver had failed on Monday, but my name was the one that was leaked.

"It was supposed to stay confidential. Two members of the media were the ones that leaked it. Again, I didn't want to get up there and say something that I regretted, either, because there's a lot of people... I'm trying to protect Scottie.

"I don't want to mention his name. I'm trying to protect TaylorMade. I'm trying to protect the USGA, PGA of America, myself. I just didn't want to get up there and say something that I regretted.

"That's not my information to share. I knew that that had happened, but that's not on me to share that and I felt that process is supposed to be kept confidential, and it wasn't for whatever reason. That's why I was pretty annoyed at that."

McIlroy also insisted that he had no regrets about not speaking to the media, which is not mandatory for players on the PGA Tour. He made it clear that he was perfectly entitled to skip interviews without needing to give any explanation.

"If we all wanted to, we could all bypass you guys and we could just go on this and we could go on social media and we could talk about our round and do it our own way," he continued.

"I think there should be an understanding that this is a two-way street, and as much as we need to speak to you guys, we understand the benefit that comes from you being here and giving us the platform and everything else, so I understand that.

"But again, I've been beating this drum for a long time. If they want to make it mandatory, that's fine, but in our rules it says that it's not.

"Until the day that it's maybe written into the regulations, you're going to have guys skip from time to time and that's well within our rights."