Rory McIlroy calls for new Champions League-style global Tour amid PGA Tour-LIV Golf negotiations
McIlroy, seemingly done fighting against LIV Golf, appears to be focused on bringing the sport back together
LOS ANGELES — Rory McIlroy isn’t making leadership decisions anymore on the PGA Tour. He’s also not defending the league as much as he did when the battle with LIV Golf started a few years ago.
On Saturday, McIlroy threw out a new idea that would seemingly go above and beyond both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. He wants the golf world back together and for it to be more global.
“I think you would just create a Tour for the top 80 players in the world,” he said after his third round at the Genesis Invitational at Brentwood's Riviera Country Club.
While the sport seems incredibly far from that at the moment, the idea isn’t actually that radical. It’s already happening in Europe, and both the Tour and LIV Golf could continue as is.
“I think everything sort of feeds up into that one,” McIlroy said of the hypothetical new venture. “You know, the way I look at it, it would be like Champions League in European football. It sort of sits above the rest of the leagues, and then all those leagues sort of feed up into that, and the best of the best play against each other in the Champions League is the way I think about it.”
McIlroy’s idea would help to both preserve the biggest events in the United States and start expanding golf to the rest of the world, including Australia, South America, South Africa and Asia.
“This is the biggest market in golf in the world, so you have to take that into account,” he said. “But there's no reason why for other parts of the year that we can't go further afield and play in some of those big markets. I think it would be beneficial not just for those markets and those fans but also for the tour as a whole and media partners and sponsors and everyone else.”
Could something like this actually happen?
At the moment, more radical changes to the sport seem very far off.
The PGA Tour and LIV Golf, after their surprise merger announcement last summer, have yet to strike a deal to come back together, missing a Dec. 31, 2023, deadline to do so. That deal is under investigation by the United States government, too, and more Tour golfers have jumped ship for the Saudi Arabian-backed venture. The Tour also received a $3 billion investment earlier this year, which is helping to fund its new signature events — such as this weekend's Genesis at Riviera — and provide players a path to hold equity in its new company.
There’s still plenty to be figured out before some sort of golf Champions League could be formed. But both McIlroy and even Tiger Woods have softened their stances on LIV Golf and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is the first step.
Apparently finished fighting, McIlroy seems to have turned his focus to unifying the sport again. That, however, is no easy task.
“I said this at the back end of last year: Everyone's got their own interests in this game, and that's what happens when you've got quite a fractured landscape at this point,” he said. “So trying to align everyone's interests and trying to convince everyone that this is the right thing to do for the game of golf as a whole, and if you can convince everyone of that, then it would be pretty simple. But right now, it's just trying to get everyone singing off the same hymn sheet.”
