Rory McIlroy hasn’t changed his mind on LIV. He has changed his mind on the PGA Tour
He was at the center of all sides' propaganda this week. But what did Rory McIlroy actually say? And what does he actually think? Let's get into it.
“I've passed the point of no return. Do you know when that is, Beth? That's the point in a journey where it's longer to go back to the beginning than continue to the end. It's like when those astronauts got in trouble. I don't know, somebody screwed up, and they had to get them back to Earth. But they had passed the point of no return. They were on the other side of the moon and were out of contact for like hours. Everybody waited to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side. Well, that's me. I'm on the other side of the moon now and everybody is going to have to wait until I pop out. Did you know, Beth, that in certain South American countries it's still legal to kill your wife if she insults you?”
— Bill Foster, Falling Down (1993)
This article is 2554 words. Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Mark Twain is supposed to have said a lot of things he never actually said, and one of those is:
“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”
This quote seems to be a descendent of another similar line from Jonathan Swift, the Anglo-Irish satirist of the 17th and 18th centuries:
“[I]t often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.”
There is something uniquely interesting about the way “lies fly” in our so-called information age, when news and information and headlines and out-of-context pull quotes hit us a thousand times a day, whenever we pass a TV screen or pull our phones from our pockets.
One such example surfaced on hit lots of golf media and Twitter X profiles over the New Year period: Rory McIlroy and the apparent blessing he finally gave to LIV Golf after the events of the past 18 months.
McIlroy was a guest on the Stick to Football podcast with four former UK soccer pros turned pundits and media darlings, Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Roy Keane and Ian Wright.
The interview ran for more than an hour but the unfortunate reality now is that a tiny percentage of us have either the time or the attention span to listen to something for an hour, even if it’s something we’re interested in.
And so, a one-hour podcast becomes a series of 60-second clips, and the series of 60-second clips become a headline.
In this case, the headlines came from Greg Norman, the always-embattled but always-spiky LIV Golf Commissioner who has been held up as both the true leader of pro golf’s journey to maturity and the villain who has broken the sport forever.
Norman, in another podcast (sidenote: as mentioned in the 2023 retrospective last time, golf media really is transforming before our eyes) LIV Golf’s Fairway to Heaven, told hosts Jerry Foltz and Su-Ann Heng [emphasis mine]:
“I’ve got to be honest with you, I’m very appreciative of what Rory said. It’s been a painful couple of years because what we have done is be consistent. Our narrative has been consistent, our delivery mechanism has been consistent.
The reason I say I appreciate Rory to fall on his sword to some degree is the fact that he did judge us by not knowing the facts. He judged us on other people’s thoughts and opinions. We wanted to sit down from Day 1 for years and years ago, we wanted to sit down with them to completely make them understand the value of what LIV footprint, business model and impact can and has made on the game of golf.
From my perspective I say, ‘Hey, thank you Rory’. We all knew it was going to work within the golf ecosystem, we all wanted to be there, we are going to be there, he said that. And quite honestly, this is a significant turning point for everybody.”
Cue all the headlines about Norman saying McIlroy had “fallen on his sword”.
But the key questions about this are as follows:
What did Rory McIlroy actually say?
What did Rory McIlroy not say?
What does Rory McIlroy actually think now?
Let’s answer numbers 1 and 2 as quickly as possible.
Then I can give a best estimate for number 3.
What Rory McIlroy actually said
I’ve transcribed and annotated Rory’s full interview on the Stick to Football podcast (yes, there is some AI that could do that for me, and yes, maybe I should get out more).
What Rory actually said in the interview can be bulleted under 15 short headings.
1. Events of the past 18 months have brought an end to meritocracy in golf
“[The issue] is the guaranteed part. You come and play golf for five or six years, and you have a contract and we’ll pay you whatever it is per year, plus you’re going to compete for this prize money as well.
The one thing for me is golf has always been built on meritocracy. You shoot the scores, you rise up the ranks and you get rewarded accordingly.”
2. LIV exposed fundamental flaws in the PGA Tour’s commercial model
“We’re all supposed to be independent contractors and we can basically pick and choose what tournaments we want to play.
What LIV and the Saudis have exposed is if you have a tour and you’re going and asking sponsors for millions of dollars to sponsor these events and you’re not able to guarantee those sponsors the players that are going to show up, it’s very hard … I can’t believe they [the PGA Tour] have done so well for so long.”
3. Golf is a small sport that can’t survive division and cannibalization
“It’s created this massive upheaval in professional golf which has been sad to see.
Some people have taken one side, some people have taken another. Golf’s a small enough sport, it’s not like football where you’ve got billions of fans. So if you start dividing the eyeballs in professional golf it’s no good for anyone, it’s just going to cannibalize itself.”
4. The PGA Tour’s initial response to LIV was completely unsustainable
“Competition is good. But at the same time, the PGA Tour trying to compete with LIV and the Saudis’ money is completely unsustainable. They can’t do that. You’re never going to win a fight if it’s just money for money. And we’ve seen in all sports, there’s no-one spending like the Saudis.
The PGA Tour [decided] to spend a lot of money [in increased prize funds] that maybe put them on a path that was unsustainable. And now you’re seeing some sponsors are pulling out because the Tour are asking for so much money, and the sponsors are like, ‘We can’t afford it. Asking us to pay 20, 25 million [dollars] an event to sponsor this thing.’
If they’re not seeing the value in it. ‘If you can guarantee me the top 50 players are going to come and play in my event that week then fine, but if you can’t guarantee me that then I’m not going to give you that money.’”
5. Talk of “growing the game” is not actually about growing the game
“If you’ve got people or a sovereign wealth fund wanting to spend money in your sport, ultimately that’s a good thing. But you just want to get them to spend it in the right way, and spend it on things that are important in the game.
Instead of giving someone $100 million, why don’t you put $50 million into a grassroots program for the R&A or the USGA so that you can actually help.
Whenever they say ‘growing the game’, spending that money elsewhere to actually grow the game and not just buy talent would be a way better way to spend that money.”
6. On veteran pros trying to ‘burn the place down’ on their way out
“The one thing that’s bothered me is, we’ve all grown up, played on the European Tour, PGA Tour and that’s given the platform to turn into who we have and give us the profile. When people have played that for 15-20 years and then they jump to LIV and then they just start talking crap about where they’ve come from, that’s what bothers me, because you wouldn’t be in this position if you didn’t have what you have coming up.
At the end of the day we’re here to make a living and make money, I absolutely understand it, especially some of these guys that are at the back end of their career. I don’t begrudge anyone for taking that money and doing something different, but don’t try to burn the place down on your way out.”
7. On respecting Jon Rahm’s LIV decision
“I think at this point with this whole framework agreement and the merger news back in June, the Tour legitimized what LIV was trying to do, so it made it easier for guys to jump.
Jon, he’s smart and I think he sees things coming together at some point. So [he can go] ‘Okay, I take a lot of upfront money’ … which is his prerogative, he can absolutely do that’ … ‘And if things come together, I’ll maybe play LIV for a year, come back play on the Tour and maybe play some team golf on the fringes.’
So I thought it was a smart business move, it’s opportunistic, he sees that things will come back together. He’s in a lucky position, he’s exempt for all the Majors, there’s not one person who wouldn’t want him on a Ryder Cup team because of how good he is. He was in a great position where there wasn’t a ton of risk involved for him to go.”
8. On getting clear on what his job actually is
For the last two years I’ve been trying to fight the good fight. Not that I’ve wasted [that time], I’ve played well the last couple of years, I’m in a good spot, but it’s not my job at the end of the day.
My job is to go out there and shoot the lowest score possible.
9. On regrets
“I’ve went through the last two years with this altruistic approach of, I’ve sort of looked at the world in the way I’ve wanted to see it, instead of going through life… I’ve accepted reality basically. This is what’s going to happen.
Have I lost a fight? I don’t feel like I’ve lost a fight but I’ve just accepted that this is part of our sport now.
If I have a regret, it’s being too judgmental with the decision of the players who accepted LIV offers early on. Not everyone is in my or Tiger’s position. We all turn professional to make a living playing the sports that we do. I think that’s what I realized over the last two years, I can’t judge people for making that decision.”
10. Being sick of the money talk
“Whenever I dreamed of being a professional golfer it was about winning trophies and it was about winning Major championships.
This happens in all sports but to me I’m just sick of the money talk in golf. Because the fans don’t care. They just want to watch good golf.”
11. How he set the ball rolling for the PGA Tour / PIF framework agreement
“I met Yasir [Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund] at the end of 2022 in Dubai, and I just said, ‘What do you want? What is it in golf that you want to do?’
So we had a really good chat. We talked about, he loves the game, he wants to do certain things, he thinks the team element in golf can really take off, and try to build franchise value in some of these teams. I understood some of it.
So when I got back to America at the start of [2023] I was on the Board of the PGA Tour and I said to them, ‘Someone’s got to go talk to this guy’.
So then there was a plan put in place where one of the Board members would try to develop a relationship with him, see if we can try to figure something out, try to move forward together.”
12. On the anger of PGA Tour players after the framework agreement
“I knew there was conversations being had but I didn’t know… It went from they met in April and they got this agreement done in June. So it happened very, very quickly.
And people were like, ‘What has gone on?’
Because the PGA Tour were telling all their players, ‘These are the bad guys coming to take over our Tour’, and then two months later it’s like, ‘Oh we’re actually going to do a deal with them’.”
13. On resigning from the PGA Tour’s Policy Board
“I resigned at the end of the year because it was just taking up too much time.
I just want to get back to being a golfer, playing golf and trying to win those tournaments I dreamed about winning as a kid.”
14. On ongoing divisions, bruised egos and the prospect of being reunited
“You’ve got guys on both sides that don’t want it to happen for certain reasons. The LIV guys don’t really want to come back and play the PGA Tour because they don’t feel they’ve been treated very well, some of the PGA Tour guys don’t want things to come back together because they don’t want to see those other guys, so it’s a really weird…
People at this point need to put their egos and feelings aside and come back together and we all move forward because that would be the best thing for golf.”
15. On one possible future for LIV within the golf ecosystem
“What I would love LIV to turn into is almost like the IPL of golf. IPL in cricket, they take two months during the calendar, you’ve got four weeks in May and four weeks in November, and you go and you do this team stuff and it’s a bit different and it’s a different format.
If they were to do something like that, I’d be like ‘Yeah that sounds like fun’, because you’re at least working within the ecosystem.
What Rory McIlroy did not say
Easy.
Rory didn’t say, “I got it wrong about LIV.”
He didn’t say, “LIV is all good now.”
He didn’t say, “LIV is the future.”
What does Rory McIlroy actually think?
Tougher.
But let’s see this out with another short numbered list.
It seems extremely likely that Rory McIlroy now thinks the following seven things, but can’t say many of them out loud:
“The future of golf is here, but I don’t have to like it.”
“I don’t like what LIV is, but I don’t like what the PGA Tour is now, either.”
“I thought I was strong enough to put the genie back in the bottle. I wasn’t, so I’m no longer going to try.”
“I tried politics, but I’m not a great politician.”
“I am a great golfer, so I’m going to stick to golf.”
“I’ll show up for all the obligations, but the Majors and the Ryder Cup are all that really matter to me now.”
“I’ll never say the Majors and the Ryder Cup are all that really matter, because my sponsors pay me a lot of money and their interests are not served if I do.”
No Breaking Bad
For about a year, Rory McIlroy was golf’s romantic, fighting to preserve both the past and the future of the game that gave him everything.
Now, Rory’s romantic days are over.
He’ll never be golf’s equivalent of Walter White or Falling Down’s Bill Foster, so violently losing faith with their current reality they become the drug lord Heisenberg or the vigilante D-Fens.
Because Rory McIlroy still loves golf.
He still loves what the game has given him.
He still loves its history.
He just doesn’t love what pro golf has become.
He’ll never be one to burn the place down.
But he doesn’t like the look of the place all the same.
Thank you for being here. The Wedge is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy these articles and would like to support independent media focused on the business, money and mystique of the world’s greatest game, please consider a monthly or annual subscription or gift a subscription to someone who might value this content.
Want more?
For a deep dive into about golf’s mystical past, read this essay from the “Golf’s New World Order” series, titled “Why we watch, why we go, why we play”