Rory McIlroy resigns from the PGA Tour Board

Rory McIlroy, the esteemed golfer who has been among the most vocal opponents of his sport’s growing ties with Saudi Arabia, has resigned from the PGA Tour board.

The tour confirmed his departure in a statement Tuesday evening.

“Given the extraordinary time and effort that Rory – and all his fellow player directors – have invested in the tour during this unprecedented, transformative period in our history, we certainly understand and respect his decision to step down to focus on his playing . and his family,” Commissioner Jay Monahan and Edward D. Herlihy, chairman of the board, said in the statement.

Mr. McIlroy, the men said, was instrumental in shaping the tour’s success, and his willingness to thoughtfully express his opinions was particularly impressive.

Mr McIlroy’s agent did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Mr McIlroy’s decision came about five months after the tour, following secret negotiations, reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to try to set up a joint company that would end the country’s money-fuelled war wave for supremacy. Most board members, including Mr McIlroy, had no knowledge of the deal or the discussions that led to it until shortly before it was announced in June and the match between the tour and LIV Golf, the league that Saudi Arabia had built with a mix of billions of dollars and major defections from the PGA Tour.

Mr McIlroy was quick to express a pragmatic fatalism about the deal – which calls for the tour and wealth fund to combine their commercial golf operations – and the proposed partnership with Saudi Arabia, which has expanded its investment in the sport.

“When you think about one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, would you rather have them as a partner or as an enemy?” Mr. McIlroy asked on June 7, the day after the tour announced the transaction, which still has not been completed. “In the end, money talks, and you prefer to have that as a partner.”

But he also made no secret of the fact that the machinations of the tour had overwhelmed and stung him. Few golfers had been sharper critics of LIV and the players who participated in it, and the PGA Tour had benefited from the credibility of a four-time major tournament winner who was, in fact, its foremost public champion.

“It’s hard for me not to sit up here and feel a little bit like a sacrificial lamb and feel like I’ve put myself out there and this is what’s happening,” Mr. McIlroy said at the same news conference in Toronto.

Although he continued, he indicated this week that he was tired of the role. Asked in the United Arab Emirates whether he was enjoying his term in office, Mr McIlroy replied: “Not particularly, no. Not what I signed up for when I joined the board. But yes, the game of professional golf has been evolving over the past two years.”

He gave no indication that an exit was in the offing.

On Monday, the 12-member board wrapped up a meeting at the tour’s headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where it heard about a handful of bids for minority stakes that could appropriate or involve money from the Saudis. In a memo to the players on Tuesday, Mr. Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, said the board had “agreed to continue the negotiation process to select the final minority investor(s) in a timely manner.”

Mr. Monahan said in his memo that the tour heard from “dozens” of prospects about potential investments and passed the candidates to a smaller group for board review. The tour, which has faced pushback from Congress and the Justice Department over its evolving approach to working with Saudi Arabia, has more stakes than just money at stake.

Some players and executives believe a role for influential U.S. investors could reduce Washington’s criticism of — and possible attempts to block — the transaction.

“Even if there is a deal, it is not certain,” McIlroy said this week. “So yeah, we’ll just have to wait and see. But in my opinion, the faster something is done, the better.”

Mr McIlroy is the second person to resign from the tour’s board since the summer. In July, former AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson left the seat he had held for 12 years, citing his “serious concerns about the way this framework agreement was negotiated without board oversight.” At the time, Mr. Stephenson wrote that he could not “objectively assess or in good conscience support” the deal, especially given the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Mr. Stephenson’s departure created a lot of attention on Wall Street and in the golf centers. But Mr McIlroy’s decision is a particularly public blow to the tour and its board. While the group still includes figures like Tiger Woods and Patrick Cantlay, the 34-year-old Mr. McIlroy has long been one of golf’s most lovable stars.

However, when the time came for the tour to enter negotiations with the wealth fund, he was among the board members left out of the talks.

Only two members, Mr. Herlihy, a partner at the Wall Street law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and James J. Dunne III, vice chairman of the investment bank Piper Sandler, were involved. The secrecy infuriated other board members and helped fuel a player revolt that led to the summer installation of Mr. Woods as director.

Hours before the tour recognized Mr. McIlroy’s resignation, a replacement for Mr. Stephenson was announced, Joseph W. Gorder, the executive chairman of Valero’s board of directors.