Rory McIlroy’s Champions League future for golf may be merger’s best hope

A year has passed since the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf backer, the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), announced a “framework agreement” for the organizations to merge and end golf’s civil war.

But numerous deadlines have since been missed with the finer details of the deal yet to be agreed, leaving players and fans in limbo with the professional game divided. Those involved in negotiations have been left frustrated by the lack of progress over the past year, with numerous PGA Tour Policy Board members quitting in recent weeks and months.

There is a consensus that the game needs to be reunified to ensure the best players from the three tours are competing together more often, but how that looks is up for debate. One proposal that looms large came from Rory McIlroy in January.

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McIlroy was among the most vocal critics of LIV after it launched in 2022 and poached top talents from the PGA Tour, but his stance has softened in recent times as he pushes for reunification. And he believes a model inspired by the UEFA Champions League could be a solution that satisfies all parties.

The move would see the tours remain active, with the best players from each circuit qualifying for a new competition, giving fans chances to see the world’s best competing more often.

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“The way I view it is a bit like [the] Champions League in football,” McIlroy explained. “t’s like the best of the best in Europe, and then all of the other leagues feed up into it. There’s lots of different tours getting interest and a lot of great players, but if you want to create something that is real value for the game of golf, I think it’s this top-level tour and then all the other tours feed into it.

“If this global tour somehow comes to fruition in the next few years, could you imagine bringing the best 70 or 80 golfers in the world to India for a tournament? I think it would change the game and the perception of the game in a country like that. So again, there’s so much opportunity out there to go global with it.

“I’ve said this for the past few months, but golf is at an inflection point, and if golf doesn’t do it now, I fear that it will never do it and we’ll sort of have this fractured landscape forever.”

Many things would need to fall into place for McIlroy’s plan to be feasible, particularly carving out space in an already-packed schedule. But with few alternatives discussed in negotiations made public, the Ulsterman’s vision of golf’s future ticks a lot of boxes.