LA JOLLA, Calif. – Rory McIlroy has made peace with the concept of reunification between the PGA Tour and players such as Bryson DeChambeau who left for lucrative LIV Golf paydays.
“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. “We don’t look behind us, we don’t look to the past.”
But he’s still on the fence whether those LIV players such as Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood or Graeme McDowell should be selected for the role of European Ryder Cup captain someday. McIlroy paused, took a deep breath and searched for the right words.
“I would have to be convinced, I would have to be convinced,” he said, repeating the same answer twice.
When asked what that might take, he said, “It would take them treating it as if Luke Donald’s treated it for the last three years, that’s what it would take to convince me.”
But as a deal appears closer than ever between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s PIF, which funds LIV Golf, McIlroy made the point that men’s professional golf has benefited financially from the creation of the renegade LIV Golf league.
“Whether you stayed on the PGA Tour or you left, we have all benefited from this. I’ve been on the record saying this a lot, like we’re playing for a $20 million prize fund this week. That would have never happened if LIV hadn’t have come around,” he said. “Whatever’s happened has happened and it’s been unfortunate, but reunification, how we all come back together and move forward, that’s the best thing for everyone. If people are butt hurt or have their feelings hurt because guys went or whatever, like who cares? Let’s move forward together and let’s just try to get this thing going again and do what’s best for the game.”
From McIlroy’s perspective, reunification shouldn’t be that complicated. If a player still has status on the Tour – such as Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka and DeChambeau, who have won majors in the last five years – then they should be welcomed back to compete. That would be a limited number of the LIV players who compete regularly on one of the 13 four-man teams.
“Having Bryson DeChambeau come back and play on this Tour is good,” McIlroy said.
In the early stages of LIV’s formation, McIlroy took players leaving for obscene paydays personally. His sterner stance, he said, was the result of the fracture in the sport not being good for the game. But now he’s taken to looking at it from a more economic standpoint.
“I look at what I made in 2019 before LIV came around and I look at what I’ve made after LIV came around and it’s very different. Like I don’t know what to say, I earn more money now than I did in 2019 and if LIV hadn’t have come around, I don’t know if I would have been able to say that,” he said. “When you sort of remove yourself from it a little bit and you look at the overall picture, like we’ve all done better because of this. The players on the PGA Tour had more leverage than they ever had to go to the Tour to say we want this, we want that or whatever.
“But at the same time I regret some of those decisions too because it put the Tour in a place where they were stretched financially and they sort of had to look at taking money from elsewhere to try to compete. But like it’s all easy in hindsight, it’s all very easy in hindsight to say these things, but I think we are closer to getting a resolution and hopefully we can all just move forward.”
How reunifying the sport is above McIlroy’s pay grade, he said (more than once), but he’s not opposed to LIV player earning equity in the Tour in the future.
“Which I think will happen,” he said. “There’s going to be these recurring equity grants every year so I think they should have the opportunity to earn it, but I don’t think they should be given it right away.”
How soon this will happen remains to be seen but McIlroy speculated that LIV players could return as early as next year, noting how LIV players have already been able to play on the DP World Tour while arbitration on the suspensions of LIV players await a day to be deliberated.
“I think there’s an opportunity here where in ’26 I don’t think it will get all the way there, but I think you’ll start to hopefully see a move towards where it could go,” McIlroy said.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Rory McIlroy has made peace with LIV golfers coming back to PGA Tour
