RORY MCILROY HAS likened a potential deal between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to the Good Friday Agreement and confirmed he will not rejoin the PGA Tour’s policy board due to pushback from a “subset” of other player-directors.
McIlroy, who resigned from the same position in November in the wake of June’s shock merger announcement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s PIF, had been expected to replace Webb Simpson on the PGA Tour policy board and the board of directors of PGA Tour Enterprises.
But speaking ahead of the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow, the four-time major winner said that despite “a lot of conversations”, his efforts to rejoin the board “sort of reminded” him why he had stepped down to begin with.
Instead, McIlroy indicated, he would continue to try to reunite golf from outside of the PGA Tour boardroom.
“I think it just… it got pretty complicated and pretty messy and I think with the way it happened, I think it opened up some old wounds and scar tissue from things that have happened before,” McIlroy said in North Carolina.
“I think there was a subset of people on the board that were maybe uncomfortable with me coming back on for some reason.
“I think the best course of action is if, y’know, there’s some people on there that aren’t comfortable with me coming back on, then I think Webb just stays on and sees out his term, and I think he’s gotten to a place where he’s comfortable with doing that and I just sort of keep doing what I’m doing.
“I put my hand up to help and it was – I wouldn’t say it was rejected. It was a complicated process to get through to put me back on there. So that’s all fine, no hard feelings and we’ll all move on.”
As efforts continue to find compromises that would reunite the sport’s fractured sides, McIlroy said that he took comfort from his lived experience in Northern Ireland that golf would eventually thrive on the middle ground created by a resolution.
McIlroy, who turned nine the same month as most of the violence of The Troubles was brought to an end, said: “I sort of liken it to like when Northern Ireland went through the peace process in the ’90s and the Good Friday Agreement.
“Neither side was happy: Catholics weren’t happy, Protestants weren’t happy, but it brought peace. And then you just sort of learn to live with whatever has been negotiated, right?
That was in 1998 or whatever it was and 20, 25, 30 years ahead, my generation doesn’t know any different. It’s just, ‘This is what it’s always been like and we’ve never known anything but peace.’ It’s my little way of trying to think about it and make both sides see that there could be a compromise here.
“Yeah, it’s probably not going to feel great for either side”, McIlroy added, “but if it’s a place where the game of golf starts to thrive again and we can all get back together, then I think that’s ultimately a really good thing.”
