Rory McIlroy doesn’t believe the PGA Tour needs a deal with PIF
Rory McIlroy said he doesn’t believe the PGA Tour needs a deal right now because of momentum the Tour has garnered in recent weeks.
Rory McIlroy believes the PGA Tour would benefit from a deal with LIV Golf but does not need one.Despite the potential for a deal, McIlroy believes the PGA Tour is in a strong position and does not have to compromise.
Rory McIlroy is not one to hide his opinion when it comes to the PGA Tour and PIF negotiations.
A staunch opponent of reunification at one point, McIlroy has recently come around on LIV Golf players eventually making their way back to the PGA Tour. He even said he played golf with then-President-elect Donald Trump before inauguration day in January to talk about the future of men’s professional golf.
McIlroy’s latest opinion: the PGA Tour may be better off on its own.
Asked Wednesday at a pre-tournament news conference ahead of the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational whether golf still needed a deal, he gave an insightful answer.
“I think the narrative around golf, I wouldn’t say needs a deal, I think the narrative around golf would welcome a deal in terms of just having all the best players together again,” McIlroy said. “But I don’t think the PGA Tour needs a deal. I think the momentum is pretty strong.”
Over the past couple weeks, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, player directors Adam Scott and Tiger Woods and LIV Golf chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan have met at the White House to discuss unification, though as Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch reported, the meetings didn’t go as well as Tour executives had hoped. Woods teased unification could be coming soon at the Genesis Invitational, and earlier in the week at Torrey Pines, McIlroy also seemed ready to move on.
“I think everyone’s just got to get over it and we all have to say ‘OK, this is the starting point and we move forward,’” McIlroy said last month. “We don’t look behind us, we don’t look to the past.”
Since then, the landscape and perspective of unification has slightly changed, and perhaps it’s not as close as either side thought a couple weeks ago. But in McIlroy’s opinion, the PGA Tour is in a position of power and needs to operate as such.
“I think a deal would still be the — I think it would still be the ideal scenario for golf as a whole. But from a pure PGA Tour perspective, I don’t think it, I don’t think it necessarily needs it,” McIlroy said.
