Rory McIlroy believes that most male professional golfers have benefitted financially from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf civil war which has changed the golfing landscape forever.
The case in point for McIlroy’s argument is that since 2023, PGA Tour players have had the opportunity to play a select number of events for $20 million prize purses while the winner of each individual LIV Golf event takes home a whopping $4 million cheque.
Even McIlroy, who is reportedly worth around $300 million admits that he has made more money on the PGA Tour since LIV Golf’s inception.
“Like for me, we’ve all done better from all of this,” said McIlroy who played the Genesis Invitational pro-am with the children of US President Donald Trump who is now heavily involved in the merger negotiations.
“Whether you stayed on the PGA TOUR or you left, we have all benefited from this. I’ve been on the record saying this a lot, like we’re playing for a $20 million prize fund this week. That would have never happened if LIV hadn’t have come around.
“I look at what I made in 2019 before LIV came around and I look at what I’ve made after LIV came around and it’s very different. Like I don’t know what to say, I earn more money now than I did in 2019 and if LIV hadn’t have come around, I don’t know if I would have been able to say that.”
Asked by the assembled media scrum what the term “reunification” meant in his opinion, McIlroy gestured that it’s vital that everyone involved in the PGA Tour, LIV Golf gets together to bury the hatchet and just move on while he also feels that the LIV players who would be eligible to return to the PGA Tour once an agreement is finalised should eventually receive the equity the current PGA Tour players receive.
“I think everyone’s just got to get over it and we all have to say OK, this is the starting point and we move forward. We don’t look behind us, we don’t look to the past. Whatever’s happened has happened and it’s been unfortunate, but reunification, how we all come back together and move forward, that’s the best thing for everyone. If people are butt hurt or have their feelings hurt because guys went or whatever, like who cares? Let’s move forward together and let’s just try to get this thing going again and do what’s best for the game.
“There are guys that were on the PGA TOUR that went to play on LIV and if they still have status, sure, come back, come back and play. Like for us, they’ve all got equity in this tour. Having Bryson DeChambeau come back and play on this tour is good.
“I think he should have the ability to earn equity, but I think what we have been given equity in this tour as a, I guess, quote unquote, like for being loyal in some way or staying.
“I think these guys coming back, I think they should have the opportunity to earn equity, which I think will happen. There’s going to be these recurring equity grants every year so I think they should have the opportunity to earn it, but I don’t think they should be given it right away.”
When LIV came onto the scene with the soul purpose of fracturing the professional golf landscape, McIlroy was the chief unofficial spokesperson for the PGA Tour in opposition to the Saudi backed tour’s advances.
Over the last eighteen months, the Holywood man has softened his stance and has gone from being fully against the LIV Golf idea to wanting to use the current rift in the game to help change the golfing landscape for the better.
The 35-year-old is desperate to see the best players playing together at some of the biggest tournaments outside of the major championships again and he believes a potential Formula One scenario is possible and could come to fruition as early as 2026.
“I didn’t feel that way initially because of the fracture that — like it wasn’t good for the game, it wasn’t good for the overall game. It wasn’t good for either tour, I didn’t think.
“I think we’re both sort of like this has been great for the major championships. We all get together at the major championships and that’s been a really good thing, but for both tours it’s unsustainable, it’s unsustainable. I think that’s where, yeah, I was opposed to a lot of it. I was opposed to 54 holes, I was opposed to the team concept in some way, but when you sort of remove yourself from it a little bit and you look at the overall picture, like we’ve all done better because of this. The players on the PGA TOUR had more leverage than they ever had to go to the Tour to say we want this, we want that or whatever.
“But at the same time I regret some of those decisions too because it put the Tour in a place where they were stretched financially and they sort of had to look at taking money from elsewhere to try to compete.
“But like it’s all easy in hindsight, it’s all very easy in hindsight to say these things, but I think we are closer to getting a resolution and hopefully we can all just move forward.
“They want to see all the best players compete against each other more often. They also — I think they want to own and operate more of their own tournaments. I would say they’d probably like to see it — I’d probably say they would like to see it transition more to like a Formula 1 global model a little bit more.
“Like there’s been a lot of research and projections done on that and if they went to that global model straight away, I think that would probably cost the Tour about 200 million a year just in terms of the media rights are very U.S. centered. You have to work through that.
“It’s a complicated — it’s a complicated thing and — but there’s no reason why you can’t bring the media rights-holders back to the table and try to figure something out.
“I absolutely think in ’26 you could get to a point where we play together more often. I think part of this is bringing the DP World Tour in as well as a really big partner of this and maybe running the global, you know, outside of America part of this in a way.
“So I think there is. You’ve had LIV guys play in a lot of DP World Tour events over the past couple years, so there’s — I think there’s an opportunity here where in ’26 I don’t think it will get all the way there, but I think you’ll start to hopefully see a move towards where it could go.”
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