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Rory McIlroy hits out at proposed PGA tour change sparked by LIV Golf

Published 17:30 16 Jun 2026 BST

Updated 17:31 16 Jun 2026 BST

Jack Fennessy
Rory McIlroy hits out at proposed PGA tour change sparked by LIV Golf

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He's not a fan

Rory McIlroy has joined the group of people who aren't fans of the PGA's reported changes for the upcoming year.

The tour's changes relates to the creation of a two-tiered tournament system.

The top tier, known as Track one, would involve elite-level events and would feature the best paired against the best more often.

While Track two events aims to provide chances to reach Track one, similar to how players already try to reach "signature" events on the current PGA tour.

On the potential changes McIlroy noted: “An event like last week, the Canadian Open, potentially going to one of these track twos — track two is a glorified Korn Ferry (developmental tour) event.

“That’s what track two is going to be, so I don’t think the Canadian Open should be one of those.

“I just think there’s going to be certain events that might lose their stature if a sponsor doesn’t pony up $30 million. So that’s the tough thing.”

The 37-year-old golfer believes that LIV Golf has created a "false economy" and that golf was in a better place before the breakaway league.

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However, with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announcing at the end of last year that they were ceasing to back LIV Golf, the threat has been reduced.

McIlroy on the impact of LIV Golf added: “Yeah, it’s funny. I think, as they’ve done all this work, you start to realise that the way the Tour was before LIV came along was actually pretty good.

"It was a pretty good structure, and everything sort of worked pretty well.

“LIV created this false economy where we had to up prize funds and had to cut fields and try to support the top players and all that stuff, which I think needed to happen because that was the only way to retain talent at the time.

“But now that LIV looks like it’s less of a threat, I think, as I said, the old ways of the PGA Tour weren’t actually that bad.”

You can view the whole clip below.

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