Rory McIlroy has previously expressed his hate towards the LIV Golf setup, but now the PGA Tour star has found himself included in the breakaway league’s latest promo posts
Rory McIlroy has also seen pictures of his face in the new advertisements released by LIV Golf after joining rival Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau in ‘The Showdown’ in December.
Aided by fellow world No 1, Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy will face Koepka and DeChambeau in a match that will have representatives from both the PGA tour and LIV golf. Though both the Tour and LIV had been excluded from the promotion of the event in Las Vegas, the latter have gone ahead and created social media content for the duel.
Posting on social media on Monday, the breakaway league’s official X accounted tweeted: “It’s on in Vegas. CONFIRMED: The Showdown will take place December 17th at Shadow Creek.”
Included was a picture of those competing, including McIlroy. The Northern Irishman then took pride of place in a separate video post from the LIV team soon after, with a voiceover from the league’s commentator Arlo White describing the match as, “the golf event of the year.”
The chances of McIlroy’s face appearing across LIV’s various platforms this time last year would have seemed impossible, after the PGA Tour star repeatedly shut down the league’s position in men’s professional golf. Prior to its inception in 2022, McIlroy described LIV as ‘dead in the water’ after a number of PGA Tour players ruled themselves out of making the Saudi switch.
Some of which later went back on their word, with the likes of DeChambeau and Koepka initially shutting down a move to LIV, before eventually following in the footsteps of Phil Mickelson. Even after it was announced that a peace agreement between the two tours was to be made last June, McIlroy still stuck to his guns.
Speaking at the 2023 RBC Canadian Open a day after the infamous framework agreement announcement on June 6, McIlroy said: “I still hate LIV. Like, I hate LIV.
“Like, I hope it goes away. And I would fully expect that it does. And I think that’s where the distinction here is. This is the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF. Very different from LIV.
All I’ve done is try and shield is who the PGA Tour is and what the PGA Tour is all about. So I believe that it will keep doing it. So hey, from now on let there be, you know, let there be a team aspect and what is going to happen now is, me, although maybe whoever will have to play some type of team golf.
But I don’t believe it’s going to look anything like LIV has looked and I think that’s fine with me.” Now the 35-year-old has his face all over the LIV platforms, though he went to lend a hand in creating the December encounter with his opponents.
Although in the year that has followed McIlroy’s past criticism, the Northern Irishman has changed his opinion, coming out as admitting that he was too harsh on those who switched. All hostitlies seemed to have been tucked to bed at this month’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship also as McIlroy enjoyed the third round of the Pro-Am event with LIV chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan.