Jun 24, 2023; Cromwell, Connecticut, USA; Rory McIlroy plays his shot from the first tee during the third round of the Travelers Championship golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports
PGA: Travelers Championship – Third Round
(North Berwick, UK) – Rory McIlroy says he wouldn’t play for LIV Golf if it was the last place on Earth.
McIlroy made his feelings known Thursday after the first round of the Scottish Open, when asked about him and Tiger Woods being named as possible team owners of the Saudi-backed golf organization.
“If LIV Golf was the last place to play golf on earth, I would retire,” McIlroy emphatically stated. “That’s how I feel about it.’’
He added that he and other players were blindsided by the LIV merger with the PGA Tour, but he’s become “apathetic towards all the noise around it.”
McIlroy, the third-ranked golfer in the world, is a member of the PGA Tour Policy Board and a leading spokesman among the players for more than a year as it attempted to push back against the LIV Golf threat.
“I’ve tried to step up for maybe the guys that didn’t have a voice early on, but I think with everything that’s transpired over the last few weeks, the players are going to find themselves more and more at the table to try to get whatever it is that they want out of it,” McIlroy said.
The 34-year-old explained he has grown tired of talking about the topic since the disclosure of a “framework agreement’’ reached on June 6.
“There wasn’t a lot of new information in there for me, there was maybe some new information for other people,” McIlroy said. “I’ve almost been too close to it over the last year, so it’s nice to be able to distance myself a bit from it.”
