Rory McIlroy refused to confirm whether he was re-joining the PGA Tour’s Policy Board but insists he can be helpful to the process of trying to sort out golf’s civil war if he is welcomed back.
McIlroy resigned from the PGA Tour Policy Board last November but said on Tuesday he was willing to do his bit if he was voted back on to help appease sponsors and Yasir Al Rumnayyan, the PIF chairman with both parties still way apart in negotiations over a framework agreement which was announced last June.
“I think I can be helpful. I don’t think there’s been much progress made in the last eight months, and I was hopeful that there would be. I think I could be helpful to the process,” explained McIlroy.
“But only if people want me involved, I guess. When Webb and I talked and he talked about potentially coming off the board, I said, look, if it was something that other people wanted, I would gladly take that seat, and that was the conversation that we had.
“But yeah, I think that’s the whole reason. I feel like I can be helpful. I feel like I care a lot, and I have some pretty good experience and good connections within the game and sort of around the wider sort of ecosystem and everything that’s going on.
“But at the end of the day, it’s not quite up to me to just come back on the board. There’s a process that has to be followed.
“But I’m willing to do it if that’s what people want, I guess.”
McIlroy would reportedly replaced Webb Simpson who has offered his resignation while the current PGA Tour player directors on the board are Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati, Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth and Adam Scott.
The four-time major winner explained upon his resignation that he wanted to focus on playing golf but he has backtracked on that, stating that he played some of his best golf while holding a role on the board.
“I would say that I’ve played some of my best golf while being a PGA TOUR board member, so I don’t think it really hindered me. It was maybe just taking away some time from me pursuing things or spending time doing things that I wanted to do at home, and having to hop on calls two, three times a week and just the whole thing started to take a toll, as it has on a lot of the players.
“We’re golfers at the end of the day. We don’t need to be trying to run a $15 billion business. We need to go out there and play golf and let the business people do the business things.”
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