THE GREATEST GOLFERS HAVE ALWAYS GIVEN BACK.
Automatically through the permanence of their records. Proactively by sharing their stories and accumulated wisdom. Munificently through philanthropy that leaves the game and the world better. Historically, no group in golf has had more to give, or given more, than the players in its pantheon, from Harry Vardon to Tiger Woods.
The current professional game, however, seems preoccupied with taking, leaving its precariously perched administrators nothing but headaches. Will playing records lose all context? Will golf’s top names stop replacing their metaphorical divots? Will the pantheon close?
Sorry, doom-loop moment. Actually, professional golf remains full of givers; they’ve just been drowned out by all the hammering on the framework agreement. But the most generous among them has risen above the noise: Rory McIlroy.
The Northern Irishman’s game is a gift, of course—not quite in the pantheon but at age 34 with a shot. More important to the subject at hand is that no matter how he plays, McIlroy stands out for having the extra dimension. Despite the demands and often disorienting forces of fame, not to mention the psychic pummeling meted out by a sport that has caused many past stars to become more remote, McIlroy remains endearingly drawn to people. Whether in casual interactions or trying to save professional golf, he continues to easily and purposefully give of himself.
This happens to be precisely what made Arnold Palmer golf’s greatest giver. We found it appropriate, then, in a moment when such qualities are more needed than ever, that Rory McIlroy receive the 2024 Arnie Award, Golf Digest’s highest honor for golfers who give back.
“I’ve told Rory many times that he’s today’s Arnold Palmer,” says Brad Faxon, who was befriended by Palmer as a PGA Tour rookie in 1984 and who has been McIlroy’s putting coach since 2018. “Like Arnold, he has this innate feel for others, an ability to read people and make them comfortable. When Rory meets someone, he looks them right in the eye, asks them questions about themselves, listens to the answers and breaks through. If he has to say no, he’s always polite. He’s the same in a highstakes setting—clear values, speaks from the heart, sees other points of view, easy to trust. Just by being himself, he has followed Arnold’s example and protected the game at a very difficult time.”
Faxon, of course, was referring to the ongoing fracture in the professional game caused by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund offering huge sums to PGA Tour and DP World Tour players to join the Greg Norman-led LIV Tour.
after McIlroy became a player director on the PGA Tour Policy Board in 2022, players jumping to LIV brought home the reality that the tour was facing an existential threat. McIlroy’s sincere, clearly articulated arguments for a unified front soon made him the tour’s favorite front man. His opponents issued verbal counterattacks, and emotions ran high, but McIlroy’s willingness to stand in a harsh spotlight and issue his urgent but measured message was admired, especially as he continued to win tournaments and once again ascend to No. 1 in the world.
“Legacy, reputation, at the end of the day that’s all you have,” McIlroy said at the 2022 U.S. Open. “You strip everything away, and you’re left with how you made people feel and what people thought of you. That is important to me.”
Palmer held to the same perspective in 1994 when Greg Norman was attempting to recruit the highest-ranked players to launch the World Golf Tour with 40-man fields and big purses. According to players present in a closed-door meeting during the Shark Shootout at Sherwood Country Club, Palmer recounted how he and Jack Nicklaus were presented with an opportunity in the late 1960s to separate from the PGA Tour and make much more money, but “both of us decided we’d do what was best for the game.” All the players Norman had counted on to jump followed Palmer’s lead instead and stayed with the tour.
Such a quick resolution was never in the cards for this current moment, but McIlroy took on the thankless task of trying to balance the differing priorities of stars and journeymen as the tour transformed its schedule to include more limited-field events with lucrative purses designed to keep big names happy as a counter to offers from LIV. Woods said that such interaction was key to McIlroy being “a true leader out here on tour. Everyone respects him, and they respect him not just because of his ball-striking, his driving, but the person he is.”
With similar antipathy toward the threat of LIV, Woods and McIlroy became perceived as a tag team, particularly after they led the crucial closed meeting in Delaware in August 2022 that included about a dozen top players. Woods and McIlroy also became business partners in Tomorrow’s Golf League (TGL), the virtual, under-a-dome competition set to launch in January 2025. Though McIlroy actually finished ahead of Woods in the PGA Tour’s 2023 Player Impact Program—which measures media interest—after Woods was first the previous two years, McIlroy invariably defers to Woods. “It’s pretty apparent that whenever we all get in the room, there’s an alpha in there, and it’s not me,” McIlroy says. “He is the hero that we’ve all looked up to. His voice carries further than anyone else’s in the game of golf.”
Growing up just outside of Belfast, McIlroy knew every detail of Woods’ rocketing accomplishments. After winning the Open ChampionSoon