NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Rory McIlroy said he was hearing rumblings about LIV Golf losing its funding from the Saudi PIF several weeks before the development came to the public eye last month.
“It was always a possibility,” McIlroy said Tuesday during his pre-tournament press conference at the PGA Championship. “I feel like a lot of us in this room, including me, we almost knew before the players did that this was going to happen. Like I was hearing about this back in March, April time.”
In the days after McIlroy won his second consecutive Masters on April 12, attention quickly shifted to the future of LIV. Reports about the PIF pulling funding first surfaced on April 15.
Later that week, as LIV was in Mexico City for a tournament, league CEO Scott O’Neil confirmed LIV was looking for new investors. The PIF officially announced its decision to cut LIV’s funding on April 30.
“I have friends over there,” McIlroy said of LIV. “One of my best friends, Ricky, caddies for Tom McKibbin, who’s over there, and I would talk to him all the time about what was going on. I was saying to Ricky, even before Mexico, Have you guys heard any of this stuff? He was like, ‘No, everything seems okay over here.’
“It just feels like the rug was pulled from under their feet and everyone was sort of blindsided by it.”
Deal or No Deal?
After initially being blindsided by the PGA Tour’s bombshell framework agreement with the PIF in 2023 that would have ended the rift with LIV, McIlroy eventually became supportive of striking a deal with the Saudis.
In November 2024, McIlroy said U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House could clear the way for a deal. However, those talks ultimately fell apart last year.
“I’m glad I was wrong,” McIlroy said on Tuesday about wanting the PGA Tour to partner with the PIF. “I can admit when I’m wrong, and that was one that I did get wrong.”
Jon Rahm—one of LIV’s biggest stars alongside Bryson DeChambeau—joined the league ahead of its 2024 season in a move many speculated was to force movement in the PIF–PGA Tour talks.
“I was never like thinking that I was going to be any sort of weight that would tip the scales to make things come together,” Rahm said Tuesday at the PGA Championship. “That was never an argument in my mind.”
Last week at LIV Golf Virginia, Rahm said he has several years left on his LIV contract and doesn’t see a “way out” of it any time soon.
