BROOKLINE, Mass. — Rory McIlroy took the podium at The Country Club on Tuesday and pondered the future of golf.
“I guess I took a lot of players’ statements at face value; I guess that’s what I got wrong,” said McIlroy, one of the sport’s biggest stars who has become the face of the PGA Tour while a handful of others, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia, have defected to the Saudi-backed alternative, LIV Golf.
“You had people committed to the PGA Tour, and that was from their statements that were put out,” McIlroy continued. “People went back on that, so I guess I took them for face value. I took them at their word, and I was wrong.”
In what could be one of the last golf majors played by a handful of former PGA Tour stars who appear to be on the verge of being blacklisted from the sport, there’s a clear divide ahead of the U.S. Open this week.
It’s the loyalists vs. the scabs. The good guys vs. the bad. Those who want to preserve history and maintain golf’s place as one of the most lucrative sports in America vs. those who are unabashedly chasing dollars and don’t seem to care much about legacy, history or tradition.
And as much as Mickelson says he values his relationships with players on the PGA Tour, and as much as McIlroy says he still respects Mickelson as a golfer, there’s no hiding the discontent between the PGA Tour players who intend to stay and those who have already left.
“My dad said to me a long time ago, once you make your bed, you lay in it, and they’ve made their bed,” McIlroy said. “That’s their decision, and they have to live with that.”
The divide is only getting stronger by the day.
The PGA Tour banned all players who have joined LIV Golf from competing in any PGA Tour events. But the four majors are not PGA Tour-affiliated. Three of them — the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship — have strong ties to the PGA Tour, while the Masters is independently run by Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.
For the time being, LIV Golf players can still complete in majors. Mickelson is in Brookline for the U.S. Open this week and intends to play in the British Open at St. Andrews in July.
But as the PGA Tour considers its options to retain as many stars as it can before more choose to defect, the clearest and most obvious solution would be to work out an arrangement to ban LIV Golf players from the majors.
“I don’t think anyone can see where this thing will be in five years’ time or 10 years’ time,” McIlroy said. “I just think for a lot of the guys that are going to play that are younger, sort of similar age to me (33 years old) or a little younger than me, it seems like quite short-term thinking, and they’re not really looking at the big picture.”
For many of the golfers who chose to stay, it was an easy decision.
“Shotgun start, three days, to me is not a golf tournament,” reigning U.S. Open champ Jon Rahm said of the LIV Golf format. “No cut. It’s that simple. I want to play against the best in the world in a format that’s been going on for hundreds of years. That’s what I want to see.
“Yeah, money is great, but when (my wife) Kelley and I — when this first thing happened, we started talking about it, and we’re like, ‘will our lifestyle change if I got $400 million? No, it will not change one bit.’ ”
While some players who defected to LIV Golf have said they prefer the format of fewer tournaments, the obvious reason they’ve defected is the money.
“Everyone has a price,” said Justin Thomas, who chose to stay.
Rahm explained his decision.
“Truth be told, I could retire right now with what I’ve made and live a very happy life and not play golf again,” he said. “So I’ve never really played the game of golf for monetary reasons. I play for the love of the game, and I want to play against the best in the world. I’ve always been interested in history and legacy, and right now the PGA Tour has that.
“There’s meaning when you win the Memorial Championship. There’s meaning when you win Arnold Palmer’s event at Bay Hill. There’s a meaning when you win, LA, Torrey, some of the historic venues. That to me matters a lot.”
The best golfers in the world who chose to stay are making impassioned remarks about why. Those who have left have had little in the form of passionate responses.
“There’s obviously a huge financial component,” Mickelson said on Monday.
The two sides couldn’t be more different in tone. And one has to wonder how it’ll affect the competition on the golf course this week.
Mickelson, once deemed to be a future captain of the United States Ryder Cup team, is expected to lose his eligibility to play (though that’s yet to be decided), has emerged as the leader of the Dark Side.
McIlroy, who already has 21 PGA Tour tournament victories at just 33 years old and is almost halfway to Mickelson’s mark of 45 career wins, is the clear leader of The Resistance.
“I don’t think it will strain any relationships,” McIlroy said. “I’m still going to be close with the guys that have made the decision to play those events. It’s not as if you agree on absolutely everything that all your friends do. You’re going to have a difference of opinion on a lot of things. That’s fine.”
And yet there’s no question the divide has added heat to the competition this week.
How about that comment McIlroy made this weekend, after he won the Canadian Open and joked he now has one more PGA Tour victory than Greg Norman, the de facto leader of LIV Golf?
“Did it help me win or help me keep a level of intensity up?” McIlroy said. “Probably.”
Giddy up.
