Rory McIlroy thinks the PGA Tour could copy the NFL and have fewer events in a season
Rory McIlroy has suggested that the PGA Tour could scale back the number of tournaments it stages each year in order to combat “fatigue” among golf’s fanbase.
Speaking ahead of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which tees off on Thursday, McIlroy reflected on the state of golf and how it could become more appealing to consumers, especially with a number of different competitions now available.
This comes a day after the Northern Irishman was playing in the newly formed Tomorrow’s Golf League (TGL), a stadium-based event co-founded by himself and Tiger Woods. The competition sees golfers hit tee and approach shots into a simulator before moving to a real-life green at the center of the venue.
“I can see when the golf consumer might get a little fatigued of everything that’s available to them,” McIlroy told reporters at Pebble Beach on Tuesday. “So to scale (the PGA Tour) back a little bit and maybe have a little more scarcity in some of the stuff that we do, like the NFL, mightn’t be a bad thing.”
The PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup regular season and playoff schedule features 39 tournaments this year. Each NFL team, by contrast, plays 17 games across an 18-week regular season between September and December.
The PGA Tour now faces competition from the Saudi-backed LIV Golf, which features some of the world’s best players – Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm to name a few. The upcoming LIV Golf season begins in Riyadh on February 6 and features 14 events, concluding in August.
McIlroy said that the PGA Tour has been “diminished” by the launch of LIV and the rise of YouTube golf – content shot, edited and presented by online creators – while also discussing how golf can better market itself to fans, both as a sport and an entertainment product.
For instance, he said that the average age of TV viewers for his inaugural TGL event in Florida was around 50, about 13 years younger than the average viewership age for a PGA Tour event. But at the same time, the world No. 3 warned against golf straying too far from its roots.
“It’s a balance,” McIlroy said. “When we’re growing up dreaming of becoming professional golfers and trying to get the best out of ourselves, the last thing on our minds is being an entertainer.
“We’re competitive people at the end of the day. We want to play against the best players in the world and we want to try to come out on top. I think that in itself should be entertaining to people.
“First and foremost, we’re professional golfers, we want to go out there and score the best score possible that we can and try to beat each other,” he added. “Hopefully, people find that entertaining and, if not, then I don’t know what to tell them.”
McIlroy will be playing in his first PGA Tour event of the year in California this week. He will face competition from world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who returns to action after suffering a freak injury while preparing Christmas dinner.
Scheffler needed surgery to remove small glass fragments from his hand after the incident, but said on Tuesday that “everything is feeling good” ahead of playing at Pebble Beach.
McIlroy, meanwhile, had some sage advice for his rival: get a chef.
“I think he made enough money to hire a chef,” McIlroy quipped. “Why are you cooking yourself? I was hoping that it was going to be a bit more of a fun story than that … It’s good that he’s teeing it up this week.”
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
