Rory McIlroy says LIV Golf and PGA Tour match is giving back to fans of a divided sport

AP Golf Writer

Two of the best players each from LIV Golf versus the PGA Tour in a televised match might remind golf fans what they’re missing outside of the four majors. Rory McIlroy believes it shows they’re at least trying to repair a divided sport.

McIlroy will have Scottie Scheffler as his partner on Tuesday against Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka in an 18-hole match pitting players from rival circuits at Shadow Creek north of Las Vegas.

Except for the four majors, it will be their only time competing together all year. McIlroy doesn’t count playing with Koepka in a member-member outing at The Grove last weekend.

“We’re trying to bring these players together, and the most opportunities we can get to do that, the better,” McIlroy said Wednesday in a conference call for “The Crypto.com Showdown” that will air on TNT.

“Does it remind people we’re not playing together all the time? Yes,” he said. “But at least we’re making the effort to try to bring the best together more often. If we can start by doing something like this, that’s only a good thing.”

He said he was approached in January in Dubai by producer Bryan Zuriff, about the time McIlroy began to soften his stance on PGA Tour players defecting to the Saudi-funded breakaway league and getting suspended by the PGA Tour.

“With the way the whole golf landscape works, I’m still unsure of when we’ll get together a little more often,” McIlroy said. “The idea is to bring the best of both tours together in a match that people could get behind and get excited about it.”

Koepka said he expected some Ryder Cup-styled vibes. No flags are involved, but the Ryder Cup since 1979 has been a competition between two tours.

DeChambeau hinted at something “bigger and badder” for next year with greater alignment.

McIlroy is on the transaction committee for PGA Tour Enterprises that has been negotiating with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia — the financial muscle behind LIV — on becoming a minority investor.

Still uncertain is what kind of schedule — LIV has shown no signs of going away — would allow for players from both circuits playing more often outside the majors.

“We’d like to see everybody back together,” Scheffler said. “There’s been so much talk about LIV versus the PGA Tour, all this talk about money. We want to get back to the competition. … It’s fund to get together to compete.”

The match will be at Shadow Creek, where Zuriff produced an exhibition between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, in which Mickelson was irritated that the PGA Tour had to be paid a rights fee because both players were members.

The PGA Tour granted releases for McIlroy and Scheffler to play at Shadow Creek.

McIlroy said while the PGA Tour was supportive, “it took a few conversations to get them to the point where they saw this could be a good thing in the long run.”

While the idea was hatched at the start of the year, it wasn’t announced until late summer. The FedEx Cup was wrapping up and all had gone quiet on the PGA Tour-PIF negotiating front.

“I don’t know if it was to spur things,” McIlroy said. “It was really about us saying we’re going take this into our own hands a little bit, and we’re going to do something outside either tour, not to give something back to the fans but to … let them know that we’re trying to provide entertainment, that the players want to play together more often.”

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