Rory McIlroy has leapt to the defence of the under-fire PGA Tour boss Jay Monahan.
The Northern Irishman believes Monahan has strengthened the PGA Tour in his time as commissioner despite facing intense scrutiny since announcing the framework agreement with the Public Investment Fund in June 2023.
After staunchly opposing the PIF and the LIV Golf League for the best part of a year, Monahan U-turned to form an alliance with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund which is yet to evolve into a final agreement to supposedly unify the game.
McIlroy described himself as a “sacrificial lamb” when the merger with the PIF was announced, having been the tour’s most vocal supporter in golf’s civil war throughout the previous year.
Nonetheless, he wants the golf world to move on and believes Monahan has taken the PGA Tour to a better place than where it was when the 53-year-old took over in 2017.
“You look at what Jay has done since he took over. The media rights deal, navigating us through COVID, the strategic alliance with the DP World Tour,” he said on Wednesday at The Players Championship.
“I would say creating PGA Tour Enterprises, we were just able to accept a billion and a half dollars in the business, people can nit-pick and say he didn’t do this right or didn’t do that right, but if you actually step back and look at the bigger picture, I think the PGA Tour is in a far stronger position than when Jay took over.
“I think some of the reaction to June 6 was warranted, but I think at this point it’s eight months ago, and we all need to move on. We all need to move forward and try to bring the game back together.”
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Rory McIlroy: Jay Monahan has strengthened the PGA Tour
During the PGA Tour’s nine-month deadlock in negotiations with the PIF, the circuit has looked to other ways of funding and signed a deal with Strategic Sports Group (SSG) which is a US-based sports investment consortium.
The tour secured this financial bolster at the start 2024 season – a schedule including eight Signature events with $20 million prize money, as well as The Players Championship this week which is dishing out $25 million to the players for their troubles.
The power of money has led to several stars leaving the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf via seven, eight and even nine-figure sums in some cases and the tour has attempted to battle back with cash injections of its own.
But as Monahan addressed on Tuesday on Ponte Vedra, the tour “fails on every front” if it can’t deliver quality for golf fans who may have become disillusioned with the sport’s newfound fixation on the dollar sign.
After defending the commissioner, McIlroy echoed this sentiment and he believes instead of serving the members as a priority, the PGA Tour must serve those who tune in week in, week out.
“So to me, like this is the problem with a members’ organisation. Things are created for the members. Then once those things are created, you’ve got to go sell those things to fans, sponsors, media.
“To me, that seems a little backwards. I think what needs to happen is you need to create things for the fans, for the sponsors, for the media, and then you have to go sell that to the players, tell them to get on board with that, because if they get on board and we’re all part of the business now, if the business does better, we do better. That seems pretty simple to me.”
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