PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA | The Wednesday morning coffee was still brewing and the dew was still heavy on the grass when Rory McIlroy stepped behind an outdoor interview podium and joked to the gathered media that he was glad to have stirred the group to action at such an early hour.
The Players Championship begins Thursday here at TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course, and McIlroy finds himself in the familiar place of drawing eyes and ears in his direction. His game is flirting with the form that has produced 24 PGA Tour victories, and his perspective helps frame the fractious times in professional golf.
Scottie Scheffler is the No. 1 player in the world ranking, but McIlroy remains the most influential voice among players, given Tiger Woods’ rare appearances these days.
McIlroy, 34, of Northern Ireland, has widened his world view, at least as it concerns finding common ground with LIV Golf to assure the PGA Tour and the sport move forward. He has been criticized for changing his tune – his disdain for the new league’s approach having evolved into a more conciliatory tone regarding a potential future together – and he has not been shy about expressing his views.
He stepped away from the tour’s Policy Board last year but has remained engaged.
McIlroy is aware that television ratings have dipped this year (the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Sunday was down approximately 30 percent from last year), he questions the current effectiveness of the signature events that he helped model and defends commissioner Jay Monahan against critics who may never forgive him for his surprise agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund last June.
Those are more-worldly matters than the very personal state of his game, which he feels encouraged about. He said he’s driving it as well as ever, which is quite a statement, but he’s fighting a tendency to tug his iron shots which has made the difference in contending and just competing.
“I’m not missing cuts, but at the same time, with how I’ve driven the golf ball the last three weeks, I should be contending in the tournaments that I’ve played.” – Rory McIlroy
McIlroy hasn’t finished inside the top 20 in four PGA Tour starts this year, but he won in Dubai on the DP World Tour in January.
“I’m not missing cuts, but at the same time, with how I’ve driven the golf ball the last three weeks, I should be contending in the tournaments that I’ve played,” McIlroy said.
Like seemingly everyone else, McIlroy finds himself at the biggest event of the year to this point and the attention remains centered on what’s happening outside the ropes rather than inside.
Barely an hour after Monahan shared what little he could about the tour’s ongoing negotiations with the PIF on Tuesday, Xander Schauffele repeated his refrain about losing trust in the commissioner’s leadership.
McIlroy pushed back Wednesday morning.
“You look at what Jay has done since he took over,” McIlroy said. “The media-rights deal, navigating us through COVID, the strategic alliance with the DP World Tour. I would say creating PGA Tour Enterprises; we were just able to accept a billion and a half dollars in the business. People can nitpick and say he didn’t do this right or didn’t do that right, but if you actually step back and look at the bigger picture, I think the PGA Tour is in a far stronger position than when Jay took over.”
He then said it’s time to look forward, not backward.
“I think some of the reaction to June 6th was warranted, but I think at this point it’s eight months ago, and we all need to move on. We all need to sort of move forward and try to bring the game back together,” McIlroy said.
Unification would seem to be at the center of the discussions between the tour and the PIF. If and when that happens remains the great unknown.
“I want the train to speed up so we can get this thing over and done with,” McIlroy said.
Among the many challenges is satisfying the PGA Tour membership, which has taken precedence over giving fans and sponsors what they want. Monahan mentioned improving the fan experience more than two dozen times in his Tuesday remarks, and McIlroy agrees.
The addition of the Strategic Sports Group into the PGA Tour’s business provides up to $3 billion and decades of collective leadership in pro sports, huge assets as the tour stabilizes itself for a future with or without the PIF.
When the LIV threat arrived two years ago, the tour players responded by creating their own working model, building a series of signature events. It succeeded in getting the top players together for the richest tournaments in tour history but hasn’t been perfect.
Enhancing the on-site experience, McIlroy said, is a necessary first step. Making the overall viewing product better also will help, and that, McIlroy said, goes hand in hand with bringing the best players together again.
“I think if you just unified the game and brought us all back together in some way, that would be great for the fans, I would imagine,” McIlroy said. “I think that would then put a positive spin on everything that’s happened here, and like OK, get together, we all move forward, and I think people could get excited about that.”
The reality, McIlroy added, is that’s likely further away than it should be.
When the LIV threat arrived two years ago, the tour players responded by creating their own working model, building a series of signature events. It succeeded in getting the top players together for the richest tournaments in tour history but hasn’t been perfect.
“If you look at the leaderboards, you look at the ratings, I felt like they really, really worked in 2023, and for whatever reason, they’re not quite capturing the imagination this year compared to last year,” said McIlroy, who will begin play here at 8:35 a.m. EDT Thursday on the 10th tee paired with Viktor Hovland and Jordan Spieth.
“If I were to put my own perspective on it, I think it’s because fans are fatigued of what’s going on in the game, and I think we need to try to re-engage the fan and re-engage them in a way that the focus is on the play and not on talking about equity and all the rest of it.”
“I think what needs to happen is you need to create things for the fans, for the sponsors, for the media, and then you have to go sell that to the players …” – Rory McIlroy
Yet there McIlroy stood Wednesday morning, talking again about the structure and the business of professional golf rather than the approaching competition. It’s a sign of the times.
Perhaps, McIlroy said in conclusion, they’ve been going about this the wrong way.
“To me, like, this is the problem with a members’ organization. Things are created for the members. Then once those things are created, you’ve got to go sell those things to fans, sponsors, media. To me, that seems a little backwards,” he said.
“I think what needs to happen is you need to create things for the fans, for the sponsors, for the media, and then you have to go sell that to the players, tell them to get on board with that, because if they get on board and we’re all part of the business now, if the business does better, we do better. That seems pretty simple to me.”