Rory McIlroy-Sergio Garcia Feud Appears to be Over

Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia appear to have made peace.

Though Garcia didn’t explicitly call out McIlroy by name Wednesday at Valderrama, site of this week’s LIV event, the Spaniard said that he “gained a friend back” that he had lost during the fallout of the PGA Tour-LIV Golf war.

Spanish outlet Ten Golf reported two weeks ago that Garcia had sent a text to McIlroy, hoping to talk and sort out their differences. During the final round of the U.S. Open, as Garcia was finishing up on 18 and McIlroy stood on the first tee, McIlroy appeared to make a “call me” gesture to Garcia, according to the Irish Golf Desk.

That conversation has apparently happened.

“The U.S. Open, it was a great event for me,” Garcia said Wednesday in Spain. “I feel like I played well. But more than anything, because I gained a friend back, a friend that I kind of felt like I lost in the last year or so. We talked and we had a great conversation, and I feel like I have that friend back, and that to me means a lot. That’s a very positive thing.”

McIlroy and Garcia were close friends during the 2010s, with McIlroy serving as a groomsman in Garcia’s wedding in 2017. But the pair had a falling out last summer, after Garcia bolted for LIV and McIlroy became one of the Tour’s most ardent defenders. On Friday of the 2022 U.S. Open, McIlroy said that he awoke to a text from Garcia “basically telling me to shut up about LIV, blah, blah, blah.”

“I was pretty offended,” he added, “and sent him back a couple of daggers and that was it.”

Garcia responded earlier this year by criticizing McIlroy for “lacking maturity.”

But a year later, the landscape has changed, particularly with the Tour recently announcing an alliance with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the DP World Tour. The details of that agreement are yet to be determined, but the move should help unify the top levels of the sport – and, potentially, repair some fractured relationships.

As of now, Garcia, 43, is ineligible to compete in the Ryder Cup this fall, even as the event’s all-time points leader, after he resigned his European tour membership. Earlier this month, DP World Tour chief executive Keith Pelley said it was “difficult and highly unlikely” that any of the European tour players who resigned their membership could be reinstated and join the European Ryder Cup team later this year.   

Before the tours announced their partnership, Jon Rahm, who most recently partnered with Garcia, said it was “a little sad to me that politics have gotten in the way of such a beautiful event.”