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There are ways for athletes to fight with the media. You can ignore them, you can freeze them out, you can give them bland cliches … or you can go right at them, as Rory McIlroy did on Thursday:

Who’s Jay Townsend, and what did he do that was so wrong? Townsend is an American, a former European Tour player who now commentates for the BBC, and on Thursday he lit up McIlroy for Rory’s rocky play and caddie JP Fitzgerald’s skills. Townsend called McIlroy’s course management “shocking” and “some of the worst I have ever seen beyond under-10′s boys golf competition.”

McIlroy, as you can see, didn’t take kindly to that, and responded accordingly. But did he go too far? Certainly, the media dishes out criticism and should be able to take it, but McIlroy’s line about Townsend being “a failed golfer” crosses a line of professional courtesy. (If Tiger Woods had written something like that, he’d have been torched.) Every golfer is one injury, one bad shot at the wrong time, one case of the yips from being a “failed golfer,” and the golf gods, if you believe in such deities, may not take kindly to McIlroy trashing one of his own in that way.

McIlroy is young, yes, but he’s still a major winner and should be conducting himself with a touch more class than a keyboard-banging Internet commenter. (Not talking about you, dear reader. Of course not.) Decorum, you know? Still, McIlroy cooled down, even if he didn’t back down:

“He’s been having a go at JP every now and again since then and this was the first time I’ve responded. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” McIlroy later told Press Association Sport. “Now I’ve blocked him on Twitter so I won’t be reading anything more.”

That darned Internet. Gets everybody into trouble. I’ll be glad when the fad passes.

McIlroy hits back at Townsend [Belfast Telegraph]

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Well would you look at that … I think it’s safe to assume the Barry Burn on the 17th hole at Carnoustie isn’t the best place to park a golf cart, but apparently an official at this week’s Women’s British Open thought otherwise.

In a hilarious photo with a rather ambiguous caption (it just mention the cart sitting in the burn following an errant drive), all we can gather is that someone was probably paying more attention to the Twitter feed on their cell phone, and less on where their cart was headed. Either that, or R&A official had a few too many pints and went joyriding around the course before dumping the cart in the iconic burn.

I guess if you’re going to dunk something into the burn during the tournament, you’d much rather it be a golf cart than a golf ball. I’m pretty Jean Van de Velde would agree with that statement.

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The point of charity is to give things to people in need, but normally, you know the people you’re giving to. Not so much the case with PGA Tour star Ricky Barnes, who was playing in the Middle Market Open National Kidney Foundation golf tournament on Wednesday and had his watch and golf clubs stolen from his rental car.

Barnes, who finished runner-up at the 2009 U.S. Open and is still searching for that first win on the PGA Tour, finished his round, dropped his golf clubs off in his rental car, and returned just 30 minutes later to find all those items missing in action.

The painful price tag of such a theft? $11,500. Most of that was because his Breitling for Bentley watch cost around $8,000, and while Barnes has banked $869,463 this season alone, it’s the pain of grooving your golf clubs that will be the biggest headache to Ricky.

A LPGA friend of mine had her golf clubs lost by an airline last season, and while the cost isn’t the problem, it’s having your wedges grinded just the way you want them, or finding that three-wood that lies exactly how you want it. Golfers are neurotic in general, so to have to go out with a whole new set of golf clubs normally isn’t good for the psyche (but don’t tell that to Brittany Lincicome … two weeks after losing her golf clubs she’s two shots off the lead at the Women’s British Open after the first round).

What did Barnes have to say about the whole thing? The University of Arizona standout kept his sense of humor about it, of course, telling reporters, “Yeah, it was a good season — with the clubs I used to have.”

Barnes is competing this week at the Greenbrier Classic, and so far isn’t having much success with his replacement set.

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