Rory McIlroy all but confirmed on Wednesday that he will return to the PGA Tour’s policy board and is just waiting to be asked.
At a press conference before the start this week of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, McIlroy was asked to confirm a report that he’s coming back to the board that he left in November and will take a seat on the board of PGA Tour Enterprises.
He said, “Not as of yet, no.”
The four-time major champion from Northern Ireland believes he can be helpful after stalled negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabia-financed LIV Golf league after a “framework agreement” for a merger announced last June.
“I don’t think there’s been much progress made in the last eight months, and I was hopeful that there would be,” he said. “I think I could be helpful to the process. But only if people want me involved, I guess.”
He said he talked with Webb Simpson, who discussed potentially coming off the board.
“I said, look, if it was something that other people wanted, I would gladly take that seat, and that was the conversation that we had,” McIlroy said. “But yeah, I think that’s the whole reason. I feel like I can be helpful. I feel like I care a lot, and I have some pretty good experience and good connections within the game and sort of around the wider sort of ecosystem and everything that’s going on.
“But at the end of the day, it’s not quite up to me to just come back on the board. There’s a process that has to be followed,” he continued. “But I’m willing to do it if that’s what people want, I guess.”
Simpson is on the board with fellow current PGA Tour player directors Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati, Adam Scott, Jordan Spieth and Tiger Woods. A vote could have been scheduled for Wednesday, according to a report in the Guardian.
McIlroy, 34, said that if he comes back, he would push for unification as “the only way forward for the game of golf.” He initially had been a sharp critic of LIV Golf but now would consider compromises and also communicate his point that unification is best for the sport and for the PGA Tour in particular.
“We obviously realize the game is not unified right now for a reason, and there’s still some hard feelings and things that need to be addressed,” McIlroy said, “but I think at this point for the good of the game, we all need to put those feelings aside and all move forward together.”
McIlroy, who is partnering with Ireland’s Shane Lowry in Zurich’s two-man team format, doesn’t think being on the board hindered his performance, saying he played some of his best golf. It did require his time and took a toll as he spent less time on other interests.
“We’re golfers at the end of the day,” said McIlroy, who joined the Player Advisory Council in 2019. “We don’t need to be trying to run a $15 billion business. We need to go out there and play golf and let the business people do the business things.”
The PGA Tour and DP World Tour have not completed a final merger agreement with LIV’s financiers, the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), in the months since a self-imposed Dec. 31 deadline came and went.
In the meantime, LIV poached its highest-profile golfer to date in two-time major winner Jon Rahm. The Spaniard was ranked among the top three in the world when he signed with LIV Golf in December.
The PGA Tour entered a separate partnership with Strategic Sports Group (SSG), a consortium of U.S.-based sports team owners.