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Rory McIlroy teeing off the 12th hole on the final day of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on October 2, 2022.
CNN –
Rory McIlroy said Thursday he would rather retire than take part in the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour, even if it were “the last place on earth where golf is played”.
Four-time Major winner McIlroy has been a vocal opponent of the breakaway golf tour since its inception a few years ago, threatening the very foundations of the sport.
The shock announcement of the merger between LIV and the PGA Tour in June seemed to end hostilities between the two golf factions, but McIlroy is still not afraid to hide his feelings about the new tour.
“If LIV Golf was the last place on earth to play golf, I would retire. That’s how I feel about it,” said McIlroy, who reportedly spoke to the press after his first round at the Scottish Open on Thursday. “I’d play the majors, but I’d be pretty comfortable.”
CNN has reached out to LIV Golf for a right of reply.
McIlroy’s comments come days after it was revealed that an adviser to the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) had suggested that McIlroy and Tiger Woods could own LIV golf teams and take part in the Saudi-backed tour, but a representative from the PGA Tour told CNN Sport that the proposals were rejected by the PGA TOUR.
The revelation came in a 276-page report released Tuesday by the US Senate Standing Subcommittee of Inquiry. The subcommittee — part of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs — is investigating the deal and Saudi government involvement between the two entities.
Earlier this week, witnesses — including PGA Tour chief operating officer Ron Price and Jimmy Dunne, a company board member who helped broker the deal — came under scrutiny by committee members about the deal.
“Today’s hearing is about a lot more than just the game of golf. It’s about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence and even take over a esteemed American institution to cleanse its public image,” said Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Standing Subcommittee on Investigations, a Connecticut Democrat.
But both Price and Dunne said the framework of the proposed merger is the best chance of allowing the PGA Tour to maintain some level of control over the sport.
“I really understand Senator Blumenthal’s concern that they are taking power,” Dunne said in his comments before the committee.
“You have an unlimited horizon and an unlimited amount of money. It’s not that the product is better. It’s just that people can make a lot more money [players] Relocation [from the PGA to LIV]. I’m worried about what the senator’s worried about. But I’m worried that if we don’t do anything, that’s where we’ll end up and that they own golf. You can do it.”
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McIlroy reacts after chipping a birdie from the bunker on the 18th green during the finals of the 2022 Masters.
A day earlier, former AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson resigned from his post on the PGA Tour’s policy board in protest at the proposed merger, saying he had “serious concerns.”
Stephenson added that the deal “is not a deal that I can objectively evaluate or in good faith support, especially given the US intelligence report on Jamal Khashoggi in 2018,” a source familiar with the letter confirmed to CNN .
A US intelligence report names Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, as responsible for authorizing the operation that led to the killing of journalist Khashoggi in 2018 – which bin Salman denies.
McIlroy said he only caught a glimpse of the Senate hearing. “As long as I’m allowed to play golf, I’m happy. “There’s quite a bit of apathy towards everything right now,” McIlroy said.
“There wasn’t much new information in there for me. It would give some new information for other people. As I said, I was almost too close last year and a little. “It’s so nice that I can try to distance myself a little bit.”
At the RBC Canadian Open last month and shortly after news of the merger broke, McIlroy said it hasn’t changed his opinion of LIV.
“I still hate LIV. i hate liv I hope it goes away. And I would fully expect that. And I think that’s the difference.”
The 34-year-old added: “It’s hard for me not to sit up here and feel a little bit like a sacrificial lamb and feel like I gave myself out there and that’s what’s happening.”
“If I withdraw from the situation one more time, I see that this is better for the game of golf. There’s no denying that. But for me as an individual, there just has to be conversations.”