Southampton (United States) (AFP) – Upcoming PGA Tour changes sparked by the threat of now-struggling LIV Golf will hurt some events by making them second-class tournaments, six-time major winner Rory McIlroy said on Tuesday. The world number two from Northern Ireland said plans for a two-tiered tournament system could turn some events into glorified developmental tour stops.
“An event like last week, the Canadian Open, potentially going to one of these track twos — track two is a glorified Korn Ferry (developmental tour) event,” McIlroy said. “That’s what track two is going to be, so 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 $30 million. So that’s the tough thing.”
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PGA Tour chief executive officer Brian Rolapp said two weeks ago the tour’s future competition committee was looking at major changes for 2028. That includes the two-tier system of track one for elite top-level events with top players competing against each other more often and track two events providing chances to reach track one, much like players try to reach “signature” events on the current PGA Tour.
McIlroy, 37, noted he is not among the decision makers and will play fewer events in coming years also. “I’m not in those rooms. I don’t know,” McIlroy said. “I play my schedule and I’ll continue to play my schedule, which is getting less and less as the years go on.”
But McIlroy also noted that the construction of the PGA Tour before the advent of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf League in 2022, which enticed players from the PGA Tour for rich contracts and bigger prize money, was effective. The PGA Tour boosted prize money for many of its events in a bid to keep big names from defecting, but the Saudi Public Investment Fund has decided to cease funding LIV after this season.
“It’s funny. Like I think, as they’ve done all this work, you start to realize that the way the tour was before LIV came along was actually pretty good,” McIlroy said. “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 and all that stuff, which I think 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 the old ways of the PGA Tour weren’t actually that bad.”
Rolapp, set to update planned changes next week after a tour board meeting, said plans — including possibly a new playoff format — remain works in progress. “I’ve been a big believer that you can come up with any format you want, (but) if it doesn’t feel authentic to the players, like it’s real authentic competition, it’s not going to feel authentic to anybody,” Rolapp said earlier this month.
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