Pádraig Harrington has labelled Rory McIlroy ‘soft’ for attempting to rejoin the PGA Tour Policy Board.
McIlroy resigned from his position on the board in November but was trying to rejoin with Webb Simpson prepared to step aside and allow him to fill the vacant space.
However, McIlroy’s request to rejoin was blocked by a number of players including Patrick Cantlay while it was also revealed that he and Tiger Woods don’t see eye to eye on the PGA Tour and PIF negotiations.
Harrington doesn’t feel rejoining the board is the right move for McIlroy who should be focusing on his golf with minimal distraction.
“He was being soft by going back to it,” Harrington said.
“You know, at the end of the day, it’s not a distraction he needs. He needs to be out there playing golf.”
The Dubliner believes there should be minimal player involvement in the merger negotiations between the PGA Tour and PIF.
“I think it’s perfect for Tiger,” he said. “He’s at that stage of his career. If you want to be a competitive player, it takes all your time and energy.”
Harrington also shared that he misses some characters from the LIV tour and last week’s PGA Championship in Valhalla reminded him of that.
“I didn’t realise when it came to LIV, you know, some of the guys left, and he said, you know, didn’t bother me. A lot of my friends went to LIV as well, but some of the guys left. But I realised last week, God, we missed Bryson,” Harrington told Golf Channel.
“Bryson was box office last week, and really, really helped that tournament, helped push Xander’s win on. It was fantastic. Interesting, exciting watching.
“So, yeah, we do miss. We miss those guys, I think, you know, as I said before, it’s hard to believe we miss Patrick Reed.”
As far as the negotiations go, Harrington sees a future with two major tours competing alongside each other.
“Ultimately if you were looking for the perfect solution I would have at least the two tours and have some crossover like we did back in the day, everybody’s got a bit of a chip on their shoulder. A certain amount of players can come and go back and forth, a few invites, something like that.
“Rivalries are a good thing in sport, it’s always been helpful, but we do need a solution – I will say that. We want to have weeks like last week at the PGA where we have the drama and have both sides, we need more of that for sure. But we don’t necessarily have to have everyone to be playing the same tournament at the same time.
“I know other people think that’s right. For me, if you get all the best players playing all the tournaments at the same time there’s just so few opportunities to win, it’s hard to create stars. I’m not averse to two strong tours and whatever goes with that.”
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