Rory McIlroy believes the “false economy” created by the threat of LIV Golf may now be putting some well-established PGA Tour events at risk. The world No 2 and current Masters champion said he felt people had lost sight of how good the tour was before it too had a huge cash injection.
When the Saudi breakaway started luring away some of the top talent on multimillion-dollar contracts during the early years the PGA Tour’s response was to restructure, creating eight signature events each with smaller field and prize funds of $20m (£15m), plus generating a number of associated financial benefits.
The threat of LIV has now subsided with its future in doubt after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – which had pumped $5bn into the venture – announced it would stop financing it at the end of the year. But further changes were already in the pipeline on the PGA Tour, including the contentious two-tier system of tournament rankings which McIlroy is not a fan of.
“It’s funny as they’ve done all this work [and] you start to realise that the way the tour was before LIV came along was actually pretty good,” said the Northern Irishman ahead of the US Open at Shinnecock Hills in Long Island, New York.
“It was a pretty good structure, and everything sort of worked pretty well. LIV created this false economy where we had to up prize funds and had to cut fields and try to support the top players.
“ I think it needed to happen because that was the only way to retain talent at the time, but now that LIV looks like it’s less of a threat, I think, as I said, the old ways of the PGA Tour weren’t actually that bad.”
“An event like last week, the Canadian Open, potentially going to one of these Track 2s. Track 2 is a glorified Korn Ferry [second-tier] event. I don’t think the Canadian Open should be one of those.
“I just think there’s going to be certain events that might lose their stature if a sponsor doesn’t pony up $30m, so that’s the tough thing.”
McIlroy will begin his bid for a second US Open title alongside Ryder Cup teammates Tommy Fleetwood and Ludvig Åberg at 7.52am local time (12.52pm BST) on Thursday. Nine months ago the trio were part of the European side which won overseas for the first time in 13 years, 60 miles west of Shinnecock Hills at Bethpage.
They will tee off at 7.52am local time (12.52pm BST), just after Brooks Koepka – a two-time US Open winner who was champion last time Shinnecock hosted in 2018 – goes out with compatriots Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup.
The event provides the world number one Scottie Scheffler with his first shot at completing the career grand slam and he tees off at 8.14am (1.14pm BST) with defending champion JJ Spaun and 2025 US amateur winner Mason Howell.
Golf’s newest major champion, Wolverhampton’s Aaron Rai, is off at 1.14pm (6.14pm BST) with Collin Morikawa and Jason Day, both major winners themselves.