Asked about Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund (PIF) pulling its funding from LIV Golf, Rory McIlroy said he\u2019s glad to have egg on his face.<\/p>\n
After previously being in favour of a PIF investment in the PGA Tour, the back-to-back Masters champion says he\u2019s happy to be wrong on this one.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad I was wrong,\u201d McIlroy said at the PGA Championship\u2019s media day on Tuesday. \u201cI can admit when I\u2019m wrong and that\u2019s one that I did get wrong. I think this was always a possibility to happen. I think everyone knows with everything that\u2019s happening in the Middle East that had a lot to do [with the decision], but whenever you have funding tied so much to the geopolitical landscape in the world, that\u2019s a tricky road to navigate.\u201d<\/p>\n
With news emerging at the end of last month that funding for LIV would be pulled after the 2026 season, McIlroy says the potentiality of this outcome was an open secret amongst those on tour. The news didn\u2019t come out of the blue.<\/p>\n
\u201c I feel like a lot of us in the room, including me, we almost knew before the players did that this was going to happen,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cLike I was hearing about this back in March, April time. And I have friends over there. One of my best friends, Ricky, caddies for Tom McKibbin, who\u2019s over there. I would talk to him all the time about what\u2019s going on and I was saying to Ricky, even before [LIV\u2019s] Mexico [event in mid-April], like \u2018Have you guys heard any of this stuff?\u2019 and he was like, \u2018No, everything seems okay over here.\u2019 And then it just feels like the rug was pulled from under their feet and everyone was sort of blindsided by it. But again, that\u2019s the risk that those guys chose to take and, as I said, it leaves a lot of uncertainty in the air right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
There will be 11 LIV golfers competing in this week\u2019s PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club near Philadelphia. The only previous champion in the group is 2010 winner Martin Kaymer. Among the other competitors are Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Cam Smith.<\/p>\n
McIlroy, 37, is a two-time PGA Championship winner. His first victory came at Kiawah Island in 2012. McIlroy then won a second in 2014 at Valhalla Golf Club. He tied for 47th at last year\u2019s event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked about Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund (PIF) pulling its funding from LIV Golf, Rory McIlroy said he\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[712,49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-664725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}