Rory McIlroy believes the disruptive emergence of LIV Golf has benefitted every male elite golfer and has defended the controversial PGA Tour changes made in response to the Saudi-funded rebel series.
LIV Golf's emergence rocked the golfing establishment to its core in 2022 as a bitter civil war erupted within the men's professional game. The contentious breakaway tour - fronted by chief firebrand Greg Norman - has vowed to shake up the landscape of a sport that has seen little structural change for over 50 years.
Big-name players like Cameron Smith and Dustin Johnson have ditched the status quo for the guaranteed riches at LIV, but McIlroy has been one of the circuit's most ardent critics and has remained fiercely loyal to the PGA Tour.
McIlroy has been one of most the influential figures driving structural change on the American circuit in direct response to the threat of the LIV enterprise. The Northern Irishman believes LIV have forced the PGA Tour's hand to make innovative changes that might not otherwise have been considered.
"I'm not going to sit here and lie, I think the emergence of LIV or a competitor to the PGA Tour has benefited everybody that plays elite professional golf," McIlroy told Sky Sports ahead of this week's Players Championship.
"When you've been the biggest golf league in the biggest market in the world for 60 years, there's not a lot of incentive to innovate and this has caused a ton of innovation at the PGA Tour and what was quite an antiquated system is being revamped to try to mirror where we're at in the world.
"LIV coming along has definitely had a massive impact on the game, but I think everybody as a professional golfer is going to benefit from it going forward."
McIlroy attended a PGA Tour players meeting at TPC Sawgrass on Tuesday morning with a revamped system at the top of the agenda. A new schedule will see some designated events with increased prize pots feature limited 70-80 player fields and no cuts after 36 holes, which has inevitably drawn comparisons to LIV's no-cut format.
However, while McIlroy has defended the changes that will be implemented from 2024, he admits that some PGA Tour players remain "angry" at the decisions that could see them frozen out of some of the most eminent events on the calendar.
"There's going to be some players within the membership that feel aggrieved that they might get into events that they historically have gotten into," he explained. "But there's one thing that changes that and that's just to shoot the scores. This is a merit based system, it always has been and it will continue to be.
"The players that play the best and shoot the scores are the ones that are going to benefit from the changes." When asked if PGA players are united behind the changes, the world no.3 added: "I would say that there's some players that are angry about the changes that are happening.
"But if they were to try to remove themselves from the situation and just see the PGA Tour as a whole and think about what we can do to serve our fans better, our media partners better, our sponsors better so we can grow the entire revenue so it benefits absolutely everyone, they could see this is the best way forward for the PGA Tour."
