Rory McIlroy’s start to the PGA Tour season hasn’t gone quite according to script thus far, with his maiden outing at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am disrupted as the event was cut to 54 holes and he’s sitting in midfield after three rounds at the Genesis Invitational, but the four-time major champion feels that the Signature Event model is working quite well, even if he’s unsure how the Tour format will look in the coming years.
“I don’t know how long these Signature Events are going to run for,” he responded when asked his thoughts on the format at the Tiger Woods hosted Genesis Invitational which featured a 36-hole cut for the top 50 players, “if it’s going to be a year and then they’re going to look at them again and see what worked and what didn’t work.
“Yeah, I think for these really big events and the ones that carry a lot of meaning and history — Riviera, Memorial, Bay Hill, those sort of events — yeah, I think this week’s worked pretty well. It would be great to have a couple extra guys still playing over the weekend, but overall I think it’s worked pretty well so far.”
Rory has spoken in the recent past of his desire to see the game take on a more global schedule and feels that any ‘global tour’ would need to see limited fields such as that at Riviera, and he also reiterated his hopes that countries that have been starved of seeing the best players in the world in action on their own doorsteps would see that rectified in the near future.
“I think there has to be a component of the southern hemisphere, Australia, South Africa,” he said. “There obviously has to be a component of the far east, whether that be Korea, Japan, China. Obviously the Middle East as well. We’ve been going to the Middle East for a long time, but obviously Dubai, Saudi, and then sort of working our way from east to west and back into the United States for the sort of spring, summertime.
“I don’t think it will look too dissimilar to what it is right now, but maybe the front end of the year and the back end of the year might look a little different. I don’t think we need to blow everything up, but there definitely needs to be some tweaks, I think.”
In McIlroy’s ideal scenario, the best players in the world would all compete on this global tour, with the various localised tours feeding into that, sort of like the Champions League in football, as he explained, and he feels that there is an increasing willingness among the leading Americans to travel outside of the United States.
“I think there’s more of an appetite than there used to be. I think about Max [Homa] and J.T. [Justin Thomas] going down to South Africa at the end of last year and playing and Max winning down there. I think there’s more of an appetite for the young Americans to travel nowadays maybe compared to the sort of ’90s and 2000s,” he said.
“You have to make it work for everyone, but I think for the most part it has to work for fans and sponsors and media. Then, if you can have it work for them and you create a product that’s really good for the fan, then honestly I think you just have to convince the players to buy into it because that’s what’s going to be best for them, especially if you’re going to be an owner of that tour.”
McIlroy, of course, is no longer on the PGA Tour Policy Board, but believes that the idea of such a tour is part of discussions within the boardroom, though admits that getting a consensus may prove difficult.
“I think so,” he responded when asked if the format he’d laid out had been discussed, “but again, 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.
“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.”
Despite the increased global nature of the idea that he’d like to see become reality, the United States would still be the main focal point of such a tour, he believes, given the size of the market and the dominant position it currently holds within the game.
“I think, say you do a 24-event schedule, four of those being the major championships, so there’s 20. I’d say at least half of those, if not more. I mean, 10 or 12,” he replied when asked how many events he would see remaining in the U.S.
“This is the biggest market in golf in the world, so you have to take that into account. 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.”
Leave a comment