Rory not holding back on defectors
BROOKLINE, Mass. — Rory McIlroy, a staunch public defender of the PGA Tour, took a break Tuesday from his U.S. Open preparation to whistle another series of hard iron shots at the stars who left the tour for huge Saudi-funded paydays on the new LIV Golf circuit.
“My dad said to me a long time ago: Once you’ve made your bed, you lie in it,” McIlroy said in a news conference at The Country Club. “And they’ve made their bed. That’s their decision, and they have to live with that.”
Former major champions Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed are among the American players who were suspended by the PGA Tour for signing with LIV, and who have absorbed widespread criticism for partnering with a league backed by a nation, Saudi Arabia, with an abhorrent human-rights record. Family members of 9/11 victims wrote a letter to the golfers excoriating them for cutting nine-figure deals with a country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers responsible for the terrorist attacks.
Asked if he understood those families’ point of view, McIlroy said, “Yeah, of course I do. I think everything that’s happening with this [LIV] tour, it legitimizes [the Saudis’] place in the world. … Of course I understand where these families are coming from, and in this day and age everything is just so intertwined, and it’s hard to separate sport from politics from dirty money from clean money. It’s a very convoluted world right now.
“I certainly empathize with those families, and I can’t imagine — I have friends that have lost people in 9/11, and it’s a really tragic thing.” McIlroy is coming off a victory at the Canadian Open, his 21st on tour. He took great delight in passing LIV CEO Greg Norman on the tour’s all-time wins list. In his Tuesday presser, McIlroy threw a jab at the younger players (DeChambeau the most prominent among them) who have bolted for the LIV life.
“I just think for a lot of the guys that are going to play that are younger,” said the four-time major champion, “sort of similar age to me or a little younger than me, it seems like quite shortterm thinking, and they’re not really looking at the big picture. Again, I’ve just tried to sort of see this with a wider lens from the start.
“That’s why I don’t understand for the guys that are a similar age to me going because I would like to believe that my best days are still ahead of me, and I think theirs are, too. So that’s where it feels like you’re taking the easy way out.”
Asked if he had lost some respect for Mickelson, the six-time major champ, McIlroy said: “As a golfer? No. He won a major championship 13 months ago, probably … one of the most impressive achievements in the history of the game of golf. As a golfer, I have the utmost respect for Phil.
“I’ve been disappointed with how he went about what he has done, but I think he has come back and shown some remorse about how he has handled some things, so I think he has learned from that.”