Rory McIlroy, the esteemed golfer who has been among the most outspoken opponents of his sport’s burgeoning ties to Saudi Arabia, has resigned from the PGA Tour’s board of directors.
The tour confirmed his departure in a statement on Tuesday night.
“Given the extraordinary time and effort that Rory – and all of his fellow directors – have invested in the tour during this unprecedented, transformative period in our history, we certainly understand and respect his decision to step down to focus on his game. and his family,” Commissioner Jay Monahan and Edward D. Herlihy, board chairman, said in the statement.
Mr McIlroy, the men said, “has been instrumental in shaping the success of the tour and his willingness to express his views carefully has been particularly influential”.
Mr. McIlroy’s agent did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Mr McIlroy’s decision came about five months after the tour, after secret negotiations, reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to try to create a joint venture that would end golf’s money-fueled war for supremacy. Most board members, including Mr. McIlroy, were unaware of the deal or the talks that led to it until shortly before it was announced in June and upended the duel between the tour and LIV Golf, the championship built by Saudi Arabia with a mixture of billions of dollars and eliminations from the PGA Tour.
Mr McIlroy soon expressed a realistic doom about the deal – which calls for the tour and the wealth fund to combine their commercial golf businesses – and the proposed partnership with Saudi Arabia, which is expanding its investment in the sport.
“If you’re thinking about one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, would you rather have them as a partner or an enemy?” Mr. McIlroy asked on June 7, the day after the tour announced the transaction, which has not yet closed. “At the end of the day, money talks and you’d rather have them as a partner.”
But he also made no secret that the machinations of the tour had blindsided and stung him. Few golfers have been harsher critics of LIV and the players involved in it, and the PGA Tour had benefited from the credibility of a four-time major tournament winner serving, in effect, as its top public champion.
“It’s hard for me not to sit here and feel a bit like a sacrificial lamb and feel like I put myself out there and this is happening,” said Mr. McIlroy, who was also among the tour leaders during the pandemic. at the same press conference in Toronto.
Although a trooper, he showed this week that he was tired of the role. Asked in the UAE if he was enjoying his time on the board, Mr McIlroy replied: “Not particularly, no. Not what I wrote about whenever I got on the board. But yes, the game of professional golf has been in flux for the last couple of years.”
He gave no indication that it was an exit.
On Monday, the 12-member board wrapped up a meeting at the tour’s headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., where it heard about a handful of offers for minority stakes that could be usurped or accompanied by money from the Saudis. In a note to players on Tuesday, Mr Monahan, the tour commissioner, said the board had “agreed to continue the negotiation process in order to select the final minority investor in a timely manner”.
Mr. Monahan said in his memo that the tour had heard from “dozens” of prospects for potential investment and whittled the candidates down to a smaller pool for board review. For the tour, which has faced blowback from Congress and the Justice Department over its evolving approach to working with Saudi Arabia, there is more at stake than money.
Some players and executives believe the role of influential American investors could reduce Washington’s criticism of — and possible attempts to block — the transaction.
“Even if a deal is done, it’s not certain,” Mr McIlroy said this week. “Well yeah, we’ll just have to wait and see. But in my opinion, the sooner something is done, the better.”
Mr McIlroy is the second person to resign from the tour’s governing board since the summer. In July, Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s former CEO, stepped down from the position he held for a dozen years, citing his “serious concerns about how this framework agreement was reached without board oversight.” At the time, Mr. Stephenson wrote that he could not “objectively or in good conscience evaluate” the deal, especially given the conclusion by US intelligence that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the 2018 killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Mr. Stevenson’s departure has turned heads on Wall Street and golf’s inner sanctuaries. But Mr McIlroy’s decision is a particularly public blow to the tour and its board. Although the group still includes the likes of Tiger Woods and Patrick Candley, the 34-year-old Mr. McIlroy has long been one of golf’s friendlier stars.
But when it came time for the tour to engage in negotiations with the investment fund, he was among the board members left out of the talks.
Only two members attended, Mr. Herlihy, a partner at the Wall Street law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and James J. Dunne III, a vice chairman at the investment bank Piper Sandler. The secrecy angered other board members and helped spark a player revolt that led to Mr Woods being installed as director in the summer.
Hours before the tour acknowledged Mr. McIlroy’s resignation, it announced Mr. Stephenson’s replacement, Joseph W. Gorder, Valero’s executive chairman.
