Always one to give an honest answer, Rory McIlroy has often been on the frontlines and in the headlines in the PGA Tour’s very public battle for supremacy against the upstart LIV Golf.
Despite PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan recently saying the Tour and LIV cannot work together, the four-time major champion thinks that, once cooler heads prevail, the two sides must meet in the middle.
“I’ve always said I think there is a time and a place where everyone that’s involved here should sit down and try to work together,” McIlroy said Wednesday at the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. “It’s very hard for that to happen right now when there’s two lawsuits going on.”
“But look, I don’t want a fractured game. I never have. You look at some other sports and what’s happened and the game of golf is ripping itself apart right now and that’s no good for anyone,” McIlroy continued. “It’s no good for the guys on, you know, this side or the sort of traditional system and it’s no good for the guys on the other side, either. It’s no good for anyone. There is a time and a place for it. I just think right now, with where everything is, it’s probably not the right time.”
“But saying that, I don’t think we can let it go too much longer,” he added. “So I’m all for everyone sitting around the table and trying to figure something out for sure.”
Though the power struggle between LIV and the traditional tours has dominated the game for the last year, McIlroy – who’s playing with his father this week – made sure to note something we’re all too quick to forget: There’s more to golf than the pro game.
“Golf is so much bigger than all of us and I think people miss that,” McIlroy said. “Sometimes our vision of what that game should be is a little bit different but at the end of the day it is golf and it’s a wonderful game and it’s a game that can be played for life.”
