Rory McIlroy sees LIV Golf sinking. Even if the rebel league somehow survives Chapter 11 bankruptcy and launches LIV 2.0, the six-time major winner is confident pro golf’s great civil war has finally ended.
“It’s hard,” McIlroy said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi, about LIV’s chances of getting version 2.0 off the ground. “It looks like every day that goes by, there’s another player that was on LIV that says that they’re not going to rejoin for LIV 2.0.
“It is going to be very difficult for them to get out of this Chapter 11 bankruptcy and go forward. But if they do, it’s certainly not going to be a threat to the traditional order of the game as it maybe once was.”
In the past week, LIV Golf has watched Jon Rahm exit the breakaway league. David Puig and Adrian Meronk followed. Sergio Garcia had his contract with LIV terminated, and attorneys for other players are looking to do the same. Even as LIV Golf and BC Partners Global filed a restructuring support agreement last week that would see BC Partners make an “initial investment” as part of a targeted $300 million in cumulative financing to help the league emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, players started fleeing a league that is no longer backed by billions of dollars from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), which started the league as a soft-power exercise.
On Tuesday, McIlroy, who was the initial face of the PGA Tour’s fight against LIV when it emerged in 2022, discussed where LIV and the PIF faltered and recalled his and Tiger Woods’ decision to take a stand against the breakaway league, believing it was bad for both their legacies as well as the overall health of the sport — and wasn’t the type of venture that would ultimately succeed. That the PIF’s money would have been better spent elsewhere in the game.
“LIV had probably like half of a good idea that was executed pretty poorly,” McIlroy said. “They had a lot of capital, but I think a lot of that capital was wasted in some ways, and I think they could have used that money a lot more strategically, and they could have partnered with some of the governing bodies of the game, and they certainly could have done better things with it instead of just enriching tour pros that were already making a lot of money.
“Tiger and I, at the very start back in 2022 when this thing kicked off, we were certainly the two that were maybe the most vocal against it,” McIlroy said. “But we were probably the two that had the most to lose as well in terms of our stature within the PGA Tour, and so — I think we both felt that this wasn’t good for the game and this was going to fracture the game. But also everyone around the game has interests, and we were about to launch TGL, and we thought LIV could have taken something away from TGL, which it did because some players went to LIV and — you had to be a PGA Tour member to play in TGL. So, you know, everyone has different interests in the game, and you’re trying to protect your interests, but you’re also trying to protect the interests of the game as a whole.”
As Rahm and others formalized their exit from what remains of LIV, the DP World Tour struck another blow to the rebel league’s chances of reinventing itself on Monday when CEO Guy Kinnings told BBC Sport that players who choose to participate in LIV 2.0 will no longer be allowed to also tee it up on the DP World Tour. With the Oct. 25 deadline for players to commit to LIV 2.0 looming, the DP World Tour’s move to block LIV 2.0 players from teeing it up on the European circuit will likely force others toward the exits and push the sport toward the unified world the breakaway league once fractured.
“You see Guy Kinnings coming out this week and saying that if LIV does go ahead in this 2.0 version, players that are thinking of going that direction, they’re gonna have to make a choice,” McIlroy said. “It’s either you play LIV 2.0, and you can’t play the DP World Tour, or you play the DP World Tour, and you can’t play LIV 2.0. But I think this period of trying to double dip and do both is over.”
As for a potential path back to the PGA Tour for LIV defectors, CEO Brian Rolapp has not yet offered a clear answer for when, how or if they will be welcomed back. Rolapp has said the “Returning Member Program,” which welcomed Brooks Koepka back in January, is no longer available and that the PGA Tour wouldn’t communicate with any player looking to return until it was certain the player’s contractual obligations with LIV had ended. Rolapp last spoke in September, as LIV entered bankruptcy, but hasn’t spoken since the case began moving through the courts and the Rahm-led exodus began.
At the Baycurrent Classic last week, Xander Schauffele said it will be a hard question for Rolapp to answer because every player affected by LIV’s emergence and golf’s civil conflict will have an opinion on what should happen to those who left.
“I’ve got no idea,” Schauffele said when asked what if Rahm and others leaving LIV will return to the PGA Tour. “There are 225 guys with Tour cards, and if you sat down and interviewed all of them, you’re going to get probably three or four boxes of how guys feel. Some guys don’t care, some guys are really ticked off, some guys want them to have a huge fine, some guys would let them back tomorrow. Where I stand in those boxes, I don’t really know. I’m in the sort of, I try to mind my own business most times.”
As for McIlroy’s opinion, the two-time defending Masters champion is ready for everyone to move on.
“Yes, I would,” McIlroy said about welcoming LIV players back to the PGA Tour. “A rising tide lifts all boats, and I think having some of these players back is beneficial for the business of the tours.”
With LIV Golf’s days as a PGA Tour competitor seemingly numbered, McIlroy is ready to look toward a future where pro golf is unified. That date is TBD. In the meantime, he’s free to say something that is four-plus years in the making — if he wishes.
I told you so.
