Rory McIlroy fully backed the DP World Tour’s CEO on Wednesday ahead of the European circuit’s tournament in Abu Dhabi.
In a recent interview with The Scotsman, Guy Kinnings explained his decision to ban players who sign with LIV 2.0 from competing on the DP World Tour while also welcoming back former LIV members such as Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia.
LIV CEO Scott O’Neil has for months stressed that LIV 2.0’s goal is “to complete, not compete,” and others have echoed that line, including Bryson DeChambeau on a recent podcast. But as Kinnings noted, LIV executives were previously trying to “destroy the DP World Tour” before the Saudis pulled their funding of the league last spring.
There is no perfect solution, Kinnings admits, but his guiding principle is to “protect” his tour and its members.
“We’ve got to protect that special culture that we have on the tour … but we also have to protect the tour against an entity who spent, so we are told, over $7 billion, with one of their aims being to ‘destroy the DP World Tour,’” Kinnings told The Scotsman. “I have heard that from so many different people they talked to, who I have known for over 30 years within the game and who I trust implicitly. Clearly when you are faced with statements like that, and then people then ask why we are doing what we are doing with our membership and invite policy for 2027, then I think the answer becomes pretty obvious…
“Regardless of who the players are, they’ve got to prove themselves in the system. I understand what some players are saying, because things have been said in the past. But if players are ready to say, I’m now ready to be supportive, do good things for the Tour and try and help, then we have to look at that.”
McIlroy, long an opponent of LIV, told reporters in Abu Dhabi that he agreed “with everything that Guy said.”
“They took players; they took sponsors; they turned professional golf into an arms race,” McIlroy explained. “They were going around Augusta saying they wanted to destroy the European tour. Yeah, I agree with everything. I think people that don’t agree are probably very shortsighted.”
In Kinnings’ interview, the CEO also said that PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, whose tour, according to reports, gave $77 million to the DP World Tour to help the league maintain competitive purses and fend off LIV, wants to extend the strategic alliance with the two tours that expires at the end of 2027. Kinnings added that LIV created a “false economy” and took prize funds to an “artificially high level,” which has forced the DP World Tour to weigh multiple options, including adjusting prize money and number of tournaments or bringing in more capital investment.
“We have to be realistic,” Kinnings said. “My goal is to ensure we make the tour as sustainable as it can possibly be now, and into the future. In many ways, this is almost the time for a reset, a bit of a recalibration for the game so to speak.”
Added McIlroy: “I think that there is going to be a bit of a reset here, just for things to be a little bit more sustainable. There’s not as much of an arms race as there was maybe a couple of years ago, and some players will argue that that’s not good for players. I think that’s very short-term thinking. If you want sustainable tours, and we want these tours around in 50 years’ time, there has to be sustainable business practices in place to make sure they are around in 50 years’ time.”
McIlroy also addressed Garcia’s return and whether the Spaniard should be allowed to captain a Ryder Cup team despite explicit rules stating that captains must be continual members of the DP World Tour; Garcia, of course, forfeited his membership a few years ago before later applying for reinstatement.
McIlroy revealed that years ago he almost gave up his DP World Tour membership to focus more on the PGA Tour before Keith Pelley informed him that if he did that, he’d relinquish any opportunity of captaining a future Ryder Cup team.
“And I was like, ‘Well, I’m not going to do that then,’” McIlroy said. “So like I nearly made that choice and having that chat with Keith Pelley and knowing rules, I was like, well, of course I want to be a Ryder Cup captain one day. There was no decision to be made. So I’ve had that, I guess, thought in my mind at one point as well, and it wasn’t even about LIV. It was just about feeling like maybe I was spread too thin and trying to play here, there and everywhere.
“But everyone knows that rule, and everyone knows that if you abdicate your membership, that’s the consequence.”