KAPALUA, Hawaii — PGA Tour star Rory McIlroy has gone from being the harshest critic of LIV Golf to extending an olive branch of sorts.
On a British soccer podcast released Wednesday, the four-time major champion from Northern Ireland said he was too judgmental about players defecting and has accepted that the LIV Golf League is “part of our sport now.”
He referred to Spanish star Jon Rahm’s decision to join LIV last month as a “smart business move.”
McIlroy also suggested he helped instigate discussions between the PGA Tour and the Saudi backers of LIV Golf. He said he met with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, at the end of 2022 in Dubai.
“When I got back to America, I was on the board of the PGA Tour, and I said to the guys, ‘Someone has got to go talk to this guy.’ Then there was a plan put in place that one of the board members would try to develop a relationship with him,” McIlroy said.