What Mary Davis and Gay Mitchell could learn form Rory McIlroy

When Rory McIlroy blew it at the Masters six months ago he was gracious in defeat - through his attitude, he made friends, not enemies: that's why we can all be delighted at his mega-win in Shanghai at the weekend. We like graciousness in defeat. That's why Mary Davis and Gay Mitchell will be remembered for their failure to show up when Michael D's victory in the presidential campaign was finally announced. They thought it was all over when the votes were counted but it wasn't. There was still the matter of how they would handle defeat and in that failure they added one defeat on top of another. We didn't coin phrases like 'bad loser' and 'gracious in defeat' for nothing and they would have done well to remember that.