Rory McIlroy backs Saudi deal as PGA Tour postponement

The PGA Tour, which has faced a wave of internal disagreement over its choice this week to accept the kind of Saudi money it spent last year as tainted, appeared Wednesday to have the backing of one of its most powerful players: Rory McIlroy, he had been one of the leading critics of the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV Golf circuit, which had shaken the sport.

Looking a decade into the future, McIlroy predicted Wednesday that the agreement to bring the tour and LIV’s business dealings into a single company controlled by the PGA Tour would be “good for the game of professional golf.”

“There’s a lot of ambiguity,” McIlroy said Wednesday in Toronto, where a tour event is scheduled for Thursday. “There are still many things that have yet to be thrown away. But at least it means that the lawsuit goes away, which has been a huge burden for everyone involved in the tour and playing the tour, and that we can start working on a way to unify the game at an elite level. ”

McIlroy, a member of the PGA Tour board, which must ultimately approve the deal that nearly blindsided the entire golf industry on Tuesday, is just one player. But he’s one of the world’s most prominent golfers, and his decision not to join the wave of PGA Tour convictions is a costly reprieve for Commissioner Jay Monahan and his allies as they scramble to quell an uprising against curb the deal.

McIlroy was among the players who met with Monahan in Toronto on Tuesday afternoon, a forum that Monahan himself admitted was “intense” and “heated”. In the wake, some players suggested confidence in the commissioner, who was secretly negotiating the deal with the Saudis.

In his appearance on Wednesday, McIlroy stated his continued opposition to LIV: “I still hate LIV. I hate them. I hope it goes away.” – but he argued the track could be defused once it becomes part of a company that controls the PGA Tour. (The tour is expected to occupy a majority of the board seats, but Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is slated to become the company’s chairman, and the fund will have the exclusive right to invest in the new company.)

“Like it or not, the PIF and the Saudis want to spend money on the golf game,” McIlroy said, referring to the Public Investment Fund, the state branch al-Rumayyan heads. “They want to do this, and they weren’t about to stop.”