McIlroy hits New Orleans with eye on PGA policy board

For this week, at least, Rory McIlroy is focused on “fun” during his first visit to New Orleans for the PGA Tour’s lone team event.

McIlroy and teammate Shane Lowry have their restaurant reservations booked in this city renowned for its dining scene. A stroll down Bourbon Street is also on McIlroy’s agenda, so he can “say I’ve been there and I’ve got the T-shirt and then move on. I don’t think I want to spend too much time down there.”

Soon, however, the No. 2ranked golfer in the world will be ready to resume exerting his considerable influence over serious matters surrounding the fractured state of men’s professional golf.

McIlroy said Wednesday that he is interested in returning to the PGA Tour’s policy board, from which he resigned abruptly last November.

“I don’t think there’s been much progress made in the last eight months, and I was hopeful that there would be,” McIlroy said, alluding his goal of seeing a formalized unification of the PGA Tour and upstart, Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf.

“I think I could be helpful to the process,” McIlroy said. “But only if people want me involved.”

The PGA Tour and LIV are in merger talks, but they have been protracted, with no clear end in sight. Both tours have continued to operate independently, keeping many of the top names in golf from competing against one another for most of the golf calendar — major tournaments (Masters, US Open, British Open and PGA Championship) excepted.

Meanwhile, the PGA Tour has taken on Strategic Sports Group as a minority investor in a deal that could be worth as much as $3 billion US.

Webb Simpson, one of the six player directors on the PGA Tour board and PGA Tour Enterprises board, has submitted a letter saying that he wants to resign as a player director, but only if McIlroy replaces him, according to a person who has seen the letter.

After his pro-am round at the Zurich Classic on Wednesday, McIlroy said he started thinking about returning to the board when Simpson approached him about it.

“I said: ‘Look, if it was something that other people wanted, I would gladly take that seat,’ and that was the conversation that we had,” McIlroy said. “I feel like I care a lot, and I have some pretty good experience and good connections within the game and sort of around the wider sort of ecosystem and everything that’s going on.

“But at the end of the day, it’s not quite up to me to just come back on the board,” he added.