PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — After an early-morning cross-country flight following his TGL debut in Florida on Monday night, Rory McIlroy arrived at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Tuesday ahead of the PGA Tour’s second signature event of the season.
McIlroy has yet to play stateside this year, but the talk surrounding him Tuesday wasn’t about the state of his game but rather about the state of golf as an entertainment product.
“When we’re growing up dreaming of [being] professional golfers and trying to get the best out of ourselves, the last thing on our mind is being an entertainer,” McIlroy said. “I really like the way golf is, and I think a lot of other people do, too, but I still understand the critiques of how the entertainment product could get better.”
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McIlroy acknowledged that the splintering of the game — between PGA Tour events, TGL, LIV (which kicks off its season in Saudi Arabia next week) and the recent rise in popularity for content creator-driven YouTube golf — also might be leading to an oversaturation of the game. TV ratings for PGA Tour events, for example, have seen drops this season.
“I think there’s space for all of this,” McIlroy said. “But I can see when the golf consumer might get a little fatigued.”
In response to concern about other forms of the sport taking away from the PGA Tour, McIlroy said he believes the tour’s product already has been diminished in recent years and that the number of events on the schedule has not helped.
“I think 47 or 50 tournaments a year is definitely too many,” he said. “To scale it back and have a little more scarcity, like the NFL, might not be a bad thing.”
The four-time major winner said Tuesday he likely will play fewer events this season while meeting the minimum requirements to maintain membership on both the DP World Tour and PGA Tour. The world No. 3 played in 27 events last year; he said Tuesday he expects to play around 22 events this year. McIlroy’s TGL team, Boston Common, also has four regular-season matches remaining.
McIlroy said TGL’s audience has skewed younger, which would accomplish its goal of appealing to that demographic with a “bite-sized” version of the sport. But he remained adamant that competitiveness, above all else, will be the main factor for creating an entertaining product in golf overall.
“We’re professional golfers, we want to go out there and shoot the best score possible that we can and try to beat each other,” McIlroy said. “Hopefully people find that entertaining, and if not, then I don’t know what to tell them.”
With the advent of LIV, however, that competitiveness in the game has suffered due to the exits from the PGA Tour of players such as Jon Rahm, Cameron Smith and Bryson DeChambeau. And while McIlroy argued Tuesday that the PGA Tour is where most of the best players in the world still remain, he noted the fastest way to improve the entertainment product is to have tournaments featuring all of the best players in the world outside of the four major championships.
“I think in this day and age, you know, it’s become a hobby to bash golf and where golf is and is it entertaining? Is it not entertaining?” McIlroy said. “I came out on the wrong side of it last year, but I would say the last round of the U.S. Open (when he was outdueled by DeChambeau) was pretty entertaining last year, and that was pure competitive golf. I think the more we can get to scenarios like that, the better.”
Even while speaking Tuesday, McIlroy appeared to be grappling with the issue at the crux of what has plagued the sport in recent years — the push and pull between golf’s staunch tradition and its apparent need to evolve.
“I don’t think we should try to dumb down golf to appeal to more people. Golf is golf at the end of the day,” he said. “It’s been this way for hundreds of years. There’s a lot of things about golf that are very different than other sports, but I think that’s what makes it unique.”
