After being cut off at the knees when Jay Monahan quite surprisingly went on television with the head of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, to announce what was perceived then to be a “merger” between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, Rory McIlroy quit his role as the establishment’s pseudo-spokesman in the great pro golf imbroglio of our times. And it’s looked like the outlook has agreed with him since. The man looks like he’s free.
He still has things to say, of course, as befitting a statesman of the game, a needle-mover, a powerful figure. He’ll tell his colleagues with misgivings over the money LIV golfers received to “get over it”.
“If people are butt-hurt, or have their feelings hurt because guys went or whatever, like, who cares? Let’s move forward together and let’s just try to get this thing going again and do what’s best for the game,” McIlroy said.
Before the Genesis Invitational, in which he putted like a donkey for T17, he said: “We’re playing for a $20 million prize fund this week. That would have never happened if LIV hadn’t have come around.”
To fend off the threat-come-novelty of LIV Golf’s teams-based game play, McIlroy and the all-powerful Tiger Woods convinced private equity that they should throw money at Tomorrow’s Golf League, the hybrid, virtual-actual, indoor, big-screen, teams-based, Tiger-vehicle and TV product that’s shot in front of scores of beer-drinking corporates at the SoFi Center in Florida.
And while we could fill a 3000-word feature on the merits or otherwise of … whatever that is … a fever dream that looks "more pointless than Pokemon", according to one promising young sports writer, it does certainly look like the players are having fun, McIlroy chief among them.
Not sure he’s going to get much practice with the ball above or below his feet, or wind or rain or anything resembling the conditions at Augusta National in a climate-controlled golf simulator, but he’s probably good enough to adjust when he does.
Jack Nicklaus, for one, believes he can.
“I still firmly believe that Rory will win The Masters; he’s just too good a player not to,” Nicklaus told the Golf Channel. “I love Rory, he’s a great guy, as talented as any player out there and he’s got a lot more majors in him.”
Off the course he’s loved up (again, after calling off the divorce) with wife Erica Stoll, with whom he shares the light of his life, four-year-old daughter, Poppy. He’s happy, healthy and fresh, and that means a potentially dangerous and very, very, very good version of one of the best golfers there has ever been.
Indeed, following wins at the Pro-Am at Pebble Beach and the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, McIlroy could go into the 2025 Masters in the best head space since pre-April of 2011, when he was a child prodigy with a pure slate, the wunderkind in the big leagues who had never been hurt.
After finishing T5 in Min Woo Lee’s Houston Open, McIlroy said: “My right elbow has been bothering me a little bit, so I'll get some treatment on that and make sure that's OK going into Augusta.
“I still feel like I've got some stuff to work on. I still don't think my game is absolutely 100 percent under the control I would want. I've got my coach, Michael Bannon, coming in [Monday] so we'll be working at home and making sure the game feels good going into the Masters.”
Sore elbow? He shot 64 with a sore elbow. Stuff it: measure him up, Green Coats. Who knows? Maybe Scottie Scheffler will get arrested again.
Related Articles
Hits and memories of Rory at Augusta
Head, heart and elbow, it's Rory's Masters
