Rory McIlroy has opened up on the toll on his mental health that the bitter feud between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf caused, but the four-time major champion insists he has no regrets
Rory McIlroy mental health was “challenged” at the height of the bitter feud between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
The four-time major champion became a defacto spokesman for the PGA Tour after the breakaway LIV launched in 2022. McIlroy was staunchly opposed to the Saudi Arabia-funded league and took aim at its commissioner Greg Norman and several of the players who made the jump.
The Northern Irishman’s stance has softened in recent times after feeling like a “sacrificial lamb” when the shock announcement was made last summer that the rival tours had reached a framework agreement to merge.
McIlroy has since resigned from his role as a PGA Tour player director to focus solely on his game, while merger talks between the tours rumble on.
The 34-year-old told the I Can Fly Podcast that had he not built up a thick skin throughout his playing career, the saga would have taken a more significant toll.
“My mental health was probably challenged quite a bit over the past couple of years,” he said. “I’ve always prided myself on being quite a resilient person. I think I was much more thin-skinned earlier in my career and I think I’ve learned to get a bit tougher in that way.
“I think if I was thin-skinned, I wouldn’t have put myself out there and been as outspoken as I was because I wouldn’t have been able to handle what came my way.
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McIlroy says he has no regrets about his role in the PGA Tour and LIV Golf feud
“Someone said to me a lot of the time, it’s the hard thing to do the right thing and that’s the way my parents raised me and that’s the way I’ve tried to live my life. You want to do the right thing, but most of the time the right thing is also the hard thing.”
Although McIlroy has toned down his criticism of LIV of late, he has committed to PGA Tour and he insists he would not have acted differently, even with the benefit of hindsight.
He explained: “As much as you want to or try to have everyone in this world like you, it’s not going to happen. It’s completely impossible. Once I realised that and thought not everyone is going to like me anyway, I think I became much more comfortable with who I was as a person, and when you become comfortable with yourself, you can be a bit more outspoken and say things that p*** people off.
“But at the end of the day, as long as you have the love from the people that are closest to you, it doesn’t really matter what anyone else says and that’s the approach that I have taken to the last two years. Has it hurt some relationships along the way? Absolutely, but time is a great healer and I was speaking up for what I believed in and I would do the same thing all over again.”
