Rory McIlroy quit PGA Tour players' text chain after Jordan Spieth's LIV Golf remarks

Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy have a frosty relationship

Rory McIlroy “removed himself” from a PGA Tour players’ group chat following comments made by Jordan Spieth about the proposed merger with the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. Spieth replaced McIlroy on the PGA Tour Policy Board in November when the Northern Irishman quit due to frustrations with tour leadership and a desire to spend more time with his family and work on his game.

Spieth also played a role in preventing McIlroy from rejoining the policy board, reports the Mirror.

The policy board has been at the forefront of the tour’s negotiations with PIF, which funds the breakaway LIV Golf. PIF and the PGA Tour agreed to a framework for a merger 11 months ago that would reunify professional golf, but there has been little progress since.

McIlroy was keen to return to the top table after a request from 2012 US Open champion Webb Simpson, who wanted to resign his role as a player director if he could select McIlroy as his replacement. However, the Ulsterman confirmed on Wednesday that he will not be rejoining the policy board.

“I think it got pretty complicated and pretty messy, and I think with the way it happened, I think it opened up some old wounds and scar tissue from things that have happened before,” McIlroy said. “There was a subset of people on the board that were maybe uncomfortable with me coming back on for some reason.”

McIlroy didn’t point fingers, but it’s believed that Spieth, Patrick Cantlay and even Tiger Woods, despite their longstanding friendship, weren’t too thrilled about the world number two’s potential return to the board.

The tension between Cantlay and McIlroy is no secret, with a notorious Ryder Cup clash and McIlroy’s candid remarks to the Irish Independent where he described their relationship as “average at best” and noted, “[We] don’t have a ton in common and see the world quite differently.”

Meanwhile, the once tight-knit relationship between Woods and McIlroy has reportedly become tense amidst the PGA Tour-LIV Golf dispute, leading to what some might call a “falling out of sorts” McIlroy and Spieth have also had their fair share of friction. They were paired with Viktor Hovland during the Players Championship’s opening round in March, which saw heated debates over two penalty drops McIlroy took after his tee shots ended up in the water.

Adding to the strain, McIlroy was not impressed by Spieth’s remarks a month earlier when the American suggested that the PGA Tour didn’t “need” to partner with the PIF following an agreement with Strategic Sports Group, half of which has already been distributed to PGA Tour players as part of an equity scheme.

Spieth remarked: “I think the positive [of a deal with PIF] would be a unification [of PGA Tour and LIV players], but I just think it’s something that is almost not even worth talking about right this second,” acknowledging his new role on the board after taking over from Rory McIlroy late last year. “The idea is that we have a strategic partner that allows the PGA Tour to go forward the way that it’s operating right now without anything else.”

McIlroy, however, found Spieth’s comments counterproductive to discussions about a potential agreement that could lead to PGA Tour and LIV Golf stars competing together more frequently. So much so, that he considered leaving a text group of PGA Tour players, as reported by Golf Digest.

The two reportedly had an hour-long conversation later to clear the air.

Regarding Spieth’s remarks at the time, McIlroy expressed his concern: “My thing was if I’m the original [potential] investor that thought that they were going to get this deal done back in July, and I’m hearing a board member say that we don’t really need them now, how are they going to think about that, what are they going to feel about that? “.

“They are still sitting out there with hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, that they’re going to pour it into sport. And I know what Jordan was saying. But if I were PIF and I was hearing that coming from here, the day after doing this SSG deal, it wouldn’t have made me too happy, I guess?”

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