eIf anybody had asked me to write a list of things I did not expect to happen in the world of professional golf, right at the top would have been Rory McIlroy volunteering to return to the PGA Tour’s policy board – just five months after he quit.
The Northern Irishman resigned ostensibly to focus on his game amid acrimony between the PGA Tour and breakaway LIV circuit.
In reality he was livid that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan had announced a potential peace deal with LIV without consulting McIlroy and his fellow players. He said that he felt like a sacrificial lamb and that he had been hung out to dry and there is no doubt that he was treated poorly after taking such a public stance against LIV and everything that it stands for.
So it comes as a huge surprise to hear McIlroy saying that he has discussed replacing Webb Simpson on the board and that he believes he can help to speed up the progress of merger talks between the tours. I don’t think that anybody saw that coming.
The four-time major winner confirmed he has not yet returned to the board but would do so if he was wanted. I think we all believe that he will be wanted.
“I think I can be helpful,” McIlroy said. “I don’t think there’s been much progress made in the last eight months, and I was hopeful that there would be.
“I think I could be helpful to the process. But only if people want me involved, I guess. When Webb and I talked and he talked about potentially coming off the board, I said, ‘Look, if it was something that other people wanted, I would gladly take that seat,’ and that was the conversation that we had.
“At the end of the day, it’s not quite up to me to just come back on the board. There’s a process that has to be followed. But I’m willing to do it if that’s what people want.”
McIlroy added that a unified circuit was “the only way forward for the game of golf”.
“We obviously realize the game is not unified right now for a reason, and there’s still some hard feelings and things that need to be addressed. But I think at this point for the good of the game, we all need to put those feelings aside and all move forward together.”
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