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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
In four-time major champion Rory McIlroy‘s perfect world, the best players in men’s professional golf would play on a top international tour with other circuits around the world feeding into it.
Golfers would have to play well enough to remain on the top tour, and golfers in the lower circuits could play their way into it.
“The way I view it is a bit like [the] Champions League in football,” McIlroy told reporters Wednesday, referencing European soccer’s top club competition. “It’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.”
McIlroy was one of the PGA Tour’s most vocal supporters during its battle with the LIV Golf League for the best players in the world. He resigned from the PGA Tour’s policy board last year.
Now, McIlroy’s vision for the future of the sport — as the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund try to finalize an agreement to combine their commercial assets — has a much broader canvas.
“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?” McIlroy said while speaking ahead of his defense at the Dubai Desert Classic. “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 last 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.”
In Dubai last week, McIlroy told Golf Digest that his dream scenario would involve playing tournaments in untapped markets like Australia, South Africa and Japan, instead of nearly all the sport’s biggest events being held in the U.S.
“I think the opportunity here is global,” McIlroy said Wednesday. “Look, there are still massive events in America, and I think they have huge history and tradition and they need to be kept. But there’s a lot of opportunity elsewhere.”
McIlroy’s comments echoed what outgoing DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley told reporters in Dubai this week.
“The growth of the game is global,” Pelley said. “I think that’s where the focus needs to be. This is a global game. Every business now that is growing wants to be global. What I would like to see is the game becoming more unified with a global strategy. I think the PGA Tour is coming to the realization that [going] global is the key for the growth. They have heard me say it once or twice.”
What’s the biggest obstacle in that happening, according to McIlroy?
“I think just different interests,” McIlroy said. “There’s a lot of different interests in the game, and I think what we need to do first is align interests, align interests of the players and the business and the fans and the media and try to get everyone’s interests aligned. And then once you do that, then you can move forward. So it’s the aligning of interests, which is the big key to trying to get to that dream scenario.”