The PGA Tour, which has faced a spate of internal dissent this week over its decision to embrace the kind of Saudi money it spent last year, which it denounced as fraudulent, appeared to have the support of one of its most powerful players on Wednesday : Rory McIlroy, who did this, was one of the biggest critics of the Saudi-backed LIV golf club that had rocked the sport.
Looking ahead a decade, McIlroy predicted on Wednesday that the agreement to combine the Tour and LIV’s business relationships into a single PGA Tour-controlled entity would be “good for professional golf.”
“There’s a lot of ambiguity,” McIlroy said Wednesday in Toronto, where a touring event is scheduled to begin Thursday. “There are still many things that need to be clarified. But at least it means the litigation that has been a huge drain on everyone involved with and playing the tour is over, and we can start working on a way to unify the sport at an elite level. ”
McIlroy, a member of the PGA Tour board of directors who ultimately has to approve the agreement that caught nearly the entire golf industry by surprise when it was announced Tuesday, is just one player. But he’s among the world’s most prominent golfers, and his decision not to join the wave of condemnations against the PGA Tour is a valuable reprieve for Commissioner Jay Monahan and his allies as they struggle to contain a revolt against the deal.
McIlroy was among the players who met with Monahan Tuesday afternoon in Toronto, a forum Monahan himself acknowledged was “intense” and “heated.” Some actors then indicated a loss of confidence in the commissioner, who had secretly negotiated the deal with the Saudis.
During his performance on Wednesday, McIlroy explained his continued opposition to LIV: “I still hate LIV. I hate them. I hope it goes away.” – but he argued that the circuit could be defused once it’s part of a company controlled by the PGA Tour. (The tour is expected to hold the majority of board seats, but Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund governor Yasir al-Rumayyan has stepped in as chairman of the company, and the fund will have exclusive rights to invest in the new company .)
“Like it or not, the PIF and the Saudis want to spend money on the game of golf,” McIlroy said, referring to the Public Investment Fund, the state arm that al-Rumayyan runs. “They want to do this, and they didn’t want to stop.”