Mcilroy and Woods are left high and dry by about-turn
After defending the PGA Tour for the past two years, merger has pulled the rug out from under their feet
A penny for Rory Mcilroy’s thoughts today. Actually make that about $400million, the sum the Northern Irishman allegedly turned down to defect to LIV.
Mcilroy must be absolutely fuming this morning. He should be. He has been completely shafted.
If it is really true that he was kept in the dark by PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, as Monahan himself claimed last night, he should be doubly furious. It beggars belief.
Mcilroy, more than anyone, went in to bat for the PGA Tour. He staked his reputation and his good name on it. He took bullets for Monahan.
Others who remained loyal to the PGA and DP World Tours will rightly be furious about money lost. Kicking themselves that they didn’t take the (obscene) riches on offer from LIV when they had the chance, after being warned they would be expelled from their respective tours and sued.
For Mcilroy, though, it was never about money. The 34-year-old has more than enough of that. This merger between the PGA and European tours and Saudi Arabia’s LIV promises to make him richer still.
Mcilroy believed passionately that what he was doing was right. He was the face of the PGA Tour’s campaign against LIV for two years. He fell out with fellow professionals over it. His game suffered because of it. And now? Not even a heads up.
There will be those who doubt that can be true; who will point to his hangdog demeanour and sudden reluctance to talk about LIV at the recent USPGA Championship at Oak Hill as proof that he must have known what was coming down the fairway, or out of the rough.
But equally, there is no strong reason to doubt Monahan’s claim that due to the sensitive nature of the talks, only two people on the PGA board knew, and that since it was “only” a framework agreement, he did not make Mcilroy or fellow defender-in-chief Tiger Woods aware until the last minute. He has shown himself to be completely amoral.
This is a man who referred not so long ago to 9/11 victims, asking his players to consider whether they had ever “had to apologise for being a member of the PGA Tour?”
A man who, according to US Senator Chris Murphy, argued just months ago about how the Saudis’ human rights record should disqualify them from having a stake in a major American sport, only to change tack when the numbers got big enough. “I guess maybe their concerns weren’t really about human rights?” Murphy mused.
How used must Mcilroy feel? This is the sort of hypocrisy into which he has been co-opted.
Of course only a fool could ever imagine the LIV-PGA war was ever about morals. It was always about money, and power. But for Mcilroy there was something purer. For the best part of two years, he was unambiguous, unshakable in his anti-liv stance.
Who can forget his blunt “you make your bed, you lie in it” comment when asked last year about “sportswashing” criticism being levelled at LIV golfers? This merger has completely pulled the rug out from under him.
Clearly there is much which is yet to be explained about the new entity.
How will it work? Who will hold the balance of power? What will the implications be for the Ryder Cup? But at the very least he must feel extremely queasy that he staked his reputation defending an organisation which purported to stand against LIV on moral grounds only to then run off with them, without even telling him.
How much Mcilroy and Woods really knew of the deal, when they knew of it, whether they campaigned against it, will no doubt come out in the wash.
Perhaps they, like Monahan yesterday, will argue that in the round the merger is a good thing. A necessary truce from which the game can move on (Mcilroy in particular does not have much choice in the matter – it is either that or retire.) Perhaps it is.
But, as Andrew Coltart pointed out on Sky Sports, the Northern Irishman must be asking himself what it was all for.
“He [Mcilroy] has given his heart and soul for the last two years, arguably to the detriment of his own golf game,” Coltart said. “I have to question whether he knew much of this. But there’s absolutely no doubt that if he did, it would have been an incredible distraction. And he would have wondered what was all the time and effort for to get to this point.”
lion of debt without the fixed asset of a stadium to compensate.
This is where the American consortium emerged as potential white knights.
Details were – and remain – incredibly sketchy. Howard Thomas, a former chief executive of Premiership Rugby, appears to have made the initial approach. He is listed as the managing director of Redstrike, which claims to have expertise in rugby’s development markets. Redstrike has links to 777 Partners, an American private equity group recently linked with a takeover of Everton FC.
Yet Thomas appeared to be acting for another American consortium that Telegraph Sport disclosed was headed by Alfred “Chip” Sloan, a former sports agent and lawyer. Sloan had previously inquired about buying into Saracens but was quickly rebuffed by the club. Simon Massie-taylor, the chief executive of Premiership Rugby, even hailed the American interest as a “positive news story”.
Discussions started around the turn of the year but at nearly every turn the consortium failed to make good on its pledges with the RFU Club Financial Viability Group, which has to approve any takeover, waiting in vain for the most basic of documentation.
At the same time, it became known that Crossan was willing to fund Irish only through March. The club were four days late paying the players their April payroll, although they sought to explain this delay with the “cheque’s in the post” excuse of the Bank Holiday. The squad, who were prepared to hand in breach-of-contract letters, played their final match of the season against Exeter Chiefs and finished fifth in the league, their highest position in 14 years. It is a testament to the coaching ability of Declan Kidney and the resilience of the squad that they were able to perform so consistently with so much uncertainty in the background.
A bigger battle remained. The RFU set a deadline of May 30 for the takeover to be completed. This deadline was moved 24 hours, and then by a further week after Crossan agreed to pay 50 per cent of the May payroll. An internal email sent to the players stated that the remainder would be paid “immediately [once] the funds drop in from the Americans, which is expected imminently”.
Yet yesterday, Crossan and the Americans, however serious their intentions, ran out of road for their can-kicking exercise.
Irish’s bright new dawn has now turned to darkness.