very difficult time.” Faxon, of course, was referring to the ongoing fracture in the professional game caused by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund offering huge sums to PGA Tour and DP World Tour players to join the Greg Norman-led LIV Tour. Soon after McIlroy became a player director on the PGA Tour Policy Board in 2022, players jumping to LIV brought home the reality that the tour was facing an existential threat. McIlroy’s sincere, clearly articulated arguments for a unified front soon made him the tour’s favourite front man. His oppo- nents issued verbal counterattacks, and emotions ran high, but McIlroy’s will- ingness to stand in a harsh spotlight and issue his urgent but measured message was admired, especially as he contin-
ued to win tournaments and once again ascend to No 1 in the world. “Legacy, reputation, at the end of the day that’s all you have,” McIlroy said at the 2022 US Open. “You strip everything away, and you’re left with how you made people feel and what people thought of you. That is important to me.” Palmer held to the same perspec- tive in 1994 when Greg Norman was attempting to recruit the highest- ranked players to launch the World Golf Tour with 40-man fields and big purses. According to players present in a closed-door meeting during the Shark Shootout at Sherwood Country Club, Palmer recounted how he and Jack Nicklaus were presented with an op- portunity in the late 1960s to separate from the PGA Tour and make much
more money, but “both of us decided we’d do what was best for the game.” All the players Norman had counted on to jump followed Palmer’s lead instead and stayed with the tour. Such a quick resolution was never in the cards for this current moment, but McIlroy took on the thankless task of trying to balance the differing pri- orities of stars and journeymen as the tour transformed its schedule to in- clude more limited-field events with lucrative purses designed to keep big names happy as a counter to offers from LIV. Woods said that such in- teraction was key to McIlroy being “a true leader out here on tour. Everyone respects him, and they respect him not just because of his ball-striking, his driving, but the person he is.”
TWO OF A KIND For our February cover of Golf Digest USA, we asked Rory McIlroy to re-create this photograph of Arnold Palmer from the Golf Digest Archive. Rory loved the image and studied it to get the body positioning just right. During our shoot, McIlroy was gracious to the entire crew, introduced himself, shook each person’s hand and thanked everyone on the way out – just like Arnie would have done.
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