Rory McIlroy has claimed that Donald Trump does not like the LIV format and is on the side of the PGA Tour, despite the US president staging the Saudi-funded events at his courses.
Trump met with Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour’s commissioner, last week, alongside Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, two of the influential directors on the American circuit’s powerful players’ board.
Afterwards, Monahan expressed his belief that Trump agreeing to be involved in the negotiations with the kingdom’s £750 billion Public Investment Fund – as the disputing parties seek to find a peace deal after more than 18 months of discussions – will be a decisive factor.
Monahan’s confidence is two-fold. First, because the president can obviously assist with any deal being given the green light by the US Department of Justice – which has been investigating the prospect of a merger on anti-competition grounds – and secondly because of Trump’s close relationship with the Saudis.
Not only with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the PIF governor and LIV chairman, but also with Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince.
Commenting on the round he played with Trump a few days before last month’s inauguration, McIlroy was positive about the experience, despite stating in 2020, three years after he last played with Trump, “I haven’t done it since – out of choice”.
“Yeah, it was really good,” McIlroy said on Wednesday. “We had a good discussion. I learnt that he’s not a fan of the LIV format. I was like, ‘but you’ve hosted their events?’ He was like, ‘yeah, but it doesn’t mean that I like it’. So I think he’s on the Tour’s side.”
‘Trump has direct access to Yasir’s boss’
Al-Rumayyan is seen as central to any settlement of golf’s civil war, but McIlroy feels that Trump’s intervention could be crucial.
“He has direct access to Yasir’s boss,” McIlroy said. “Not many people can say, ‘I want you to get this deal done and, by the way, I’m speaking to your boss and I’m going to tell him the same thing’.
“He [Trump] can be influential. I don’t think people appreciate how much respect that he has in the Middle East. Whenever he says something, they listen, and I think that’s a big thing.”
Monhan added insight into the aim of the talks, saying: “It’s the reunification of the professional game on one tour, with all the best players on it.”
Even if a truce is reached and the PIF invests in the PGA Tour, there would remain huge doubt about what happens to LIV in the new order. The breakaway league has continued to invest and, before last week’s season-opener, enjoyed some good news with the US Open and Open officially recognising the circuit by awarding it guaranteed berth in their majors and TV deals being signed with Fox, in the US, and ITV, in the UK.
However, McIlroy, who was for so long LIV’s most outspoken critic, struggles to see a future in which the PGA Tour and LIV can co-exist at full strength. “We all get together at the major championships and that’s been a really good thing, but for both tours it’s unsustainable,” he said.
McIlroy was talking at the $20 million (£16 million) Genesis Invitational, which has been moved to Torrey Pines, near San Diego, from its traditional home in Los Angeles because of the wild fires. World No 1 Scottie Scheffler also plays.
