McIlroy admits he was wrong ... and glad of it
His promotion of a deal with PIF would have been a bad bet to make; Stray Shots
Rory McIlroy has always be a thoughtful subject in the interview room (Terence Lewis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — In the modern age of sports journalism, the rarest gift in the game is the star athlete who has something to say. Maybe you don’t like what they have to say, but it’s truly special when they’re willing to say it. Most cop out like Michael Jordan, with a rehearsed brush-off line like “Republicans buy shoes, too.” Others get through it like Tiger Woods, saying a whole lot of words while rarely ever saying anything at all.
Rory McIlroy has never been unwilling to share. Maybe he shares too much, but when he says something you can be sure he means it. It’s not manager-vetted tripe. It’s legit feelings and opinions. And he’s not often wrong, like when he said last week that any professional golfers unwilling to play the PGA Tour are revealing a deeper truth about themselves.
“If you want to be the most competitive golfer you can be, this is the place to be,” McIlroy said of the PGA Tour. “And if you don’t want to play here, I think that says something about you.”
On Tuesday at Aronimink ahead of the PGA Championship, McIlroy had plenty to say about the tenuous state of LIV Golf. He’s never been shy about his thoughts on the subject and had opinions have evolved through the last five years. And now he’s not afraid to admit that he might have been wrong about some things.
Not too long ago, McIroy was in favor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth Public Investment Fund investing in the PGA Tour. After the 2023 “framework agreement,” McIlroy went from defending his home tour against the LIV assault to promoting a partnership between the two sides of golf’s rift.
With the PIF pulling hits funds and orphaning LIV Golf to fend for itself after 2026, McIlroy’s tune evolved once again.
“I’m glad I was wrong,” McIlroy said of his partnership push. “I can admit when I’m wrong, and that was one that I did get wrong.”
After the Strategic Sports Group investment of $1.5 billion in the PGA Tour in early 2024, McIlroy believed then the tour should make a similiar arrangement with the PIF.
“Having PIF as your partner as opposed to not having them as your partner, I don’t think is an option for the game of golf,” McIlroy said in February of 2024, noting that PIF funding of LIV is what was keeping the game from being unified. “I think they’re committed to investing in golf and in the wider world of sport and if you can get them to invest their money the right way to unify the game of golf.”
As negotiations for some kind of deal heated up early in 2025, McIlroy continued to support a resolution.
“For me, we’ve all been done better from all of this,” McIlroy said ahead of last year’s Genesis Invitational. “Whether you stayed on the PGA Tour or you left, we have all benefited from LIV. And I’ve been on record saying this a lot, we’d never be playing for what we’re playing for this week ($20 million purse).
“So I think everyone’s just got to get over it, and we all have to say, okay, this is the start point and we move forward. We don’t look behind us, we don’t look to the past, whatever’s happened, happened. And it’s been unfortunate. But reunification is the best thing for everyone.”
Now LIV is on life support after the PIF withdrawal and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, quitting the board. That leaves LIV CEO Scott O’Neil trying to cobble together new investors to keep LIV alive in some form after 2026.
McIlroy saw the PIF pulling out of its money pit as a possibility that came to a shocking reality over the course of the last month.
“I think it was always a possibility to happen,” McIlroy said of the PIF’s change of heart after sinking $5 billion into LIV for little return. “Look, I think everyone knows like with everything that’s happening in the Middle East [the war in Iran], that had a lot to do; but whenever you have funding tied so much to the geopolitical landscape in the world, that’s a tricky road to navigate.
“Their priorities shifted, and that leaves LIV in a pretty precarious spot. But again, that was always — it was always a possibility. I feel like a lot of us in this room, including me, we almost knew before the (LIV) players did that this was going to happen. Like I was hearing about this back in March, April time.”
It was shortly after McIlroy’s repeat victory in the Masters that things unraveled quickly ahead of LIV’s event in Mexico City. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reported that the PIF’s changing priorities meant pulling out of LIV Golf.
“One of my best friends caddies for Tom McKibbin, who’s over there, and I would talk to him all the time about what was going on,” McIlroy said. “I was saying to Ricky (McCormick), even before Mexico, ‘Have you guys heard any of this stuff?’ He was like, ‘No, everything seems okay over here.’
“It just feels like the rug was pulled from under their feet and everyone was sort of blindsided by it. But again, that’s the risk that those guys chose to take. As I said, it leaves — there’s a lot of uncertainty in the air right now.”
McIlroy said last week at Quail Hollow that’s he’s not averse to LIV players who can coming back to the PGA Tour, admitting that he was originally “probably too judgmental” about the defectors.
“If it is a scenario where they have the option to come back and play on the traditional tours, I think (PGA Tour CEO) Brian Rolapp has said anything that makes this tour stronger, anything that makes the DP World Tour stronger, I think everyone should be open to that,” McIlroy said in Charlotte. “That’s just good business practice.
“They’re going to go and try and find alternative investment, whatever that may look like. But when one of the wealthiest sovereign wealth funds in the world thinks that you’re too expensive for them, that sort of says something.
“Obviously the guys over there are under contract and if they are able to keep it going and get a schedule together next year, it seems like those guys are still going to play the majority of their golf on LIV, in whatever form it takes.
“I’m not going to judge anyone for not wanting to play on the PGA Tour. I don’t know, does that mean that they go play DP World Tour, maybe. If that’s a pathway, that would make the DP World Tour stronger, and I would be delighted with that.”
