PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Perhaps there’s no better example of pro golf’s current conundrum than Rory McIlroy’s last 24 hours.
McIlroy is here now in a press conference at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, on another sun-splashed day on the Monterey Peninsula. It’s 10:45 a.m. local time, a full day of work ahead. But just last night, he was 3,000 miles away, at the sparkling SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, competing for the first time in the simulator golf league that he co-founded.
It was a fun watch in a tight window, McIlroy’s Boston Common and Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links swatting shots into a screen and stroking putts on a rotating green under strobe lights and in front of an arena crowd of about 1,500. The strong first-month ratings suggest there’s an audience eager for a version of quasi-golf, and so far TGL – with its whizbang technology, rapid pace and gambling slant – has nailed its target, slashing about a dozen years off the sport’s usual TV demographic.
“It’s doing what we wanted it to do,” McIlroy said, “which is to try to entice a younger demographic to watch golf in a way that’s more manageable for them and more of a bite-sized version. Hopefully just keep going, keep the momentum.”
After the match, McIlroy drove home, tucked himself in by 10 p.m. and was buckled into a seat on his jet at 7 a.m. for the long flight west and the start of his Tour season. His real day job.
McIlroy’s season debut, plus the return of dominant world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and fan favorite Jordan Spieth, should be appealing enough to jump-start a Tour year that has been slow to launch. It’s Pebble Beach! There’s no football! Almost all of the Tour’s best are here! And yet you’d never know it from the type of existential questions McIlroy fielded here Tuesday, a reminder that some of the Tour’s lingering issues – both big and small, some foundational and others finicky – threaten to chip away at its core, competitive product.
Just look around at the landscape: McIlroy is urging unity for a fractured pro game. Justin Thomas is urging players to be more accessible to broadcast partners to stop slumping ratings. CBS Sports’ Dottie Pepper, during another five-hour-plus round, is urging the Tour to address its pace-of-play epidemic.
McIlroy’s own 24-hour journey underscores the current struggle that suggests, for the first time, that being one of the best golfers in the world mightn’t be enough. Instead of preparing for a $20 million signature event at one of America’s most iconic venues on the world’s strongest tour, he was helping launch his golf-adjacent startup.
All of these elements were supposed to be additive to the golf ecosystem – TGL and LIV and YouTube influencers. But in many ways, they’ve only created more opportunity for distraction, disruption and divided attention from the overall PGA Tour.
“I think it already has been diminished,” McIlroy admitted.
That’s not to say they don’t all serve a purpose. TGL is capitalizing on a short spring window to showcase a different version of the ancient game. LIV is guaranteeing a product and players on a global scale. YouTubers are finding their niche as relatable golfers doing cool things. But it’s also become abundantly clear that the Tour needs to compromise, to make some concessions, in some way, if it wants to not just survive but thrive in this new era.
“There’s space for all of this,” McIlroy said. “But I can see when the golf consumer might get a little fatigued of everything that’s available to them.”
And that’s where the brainstorming really begins – even if each possible solution is rife with problems, too.
McIlroy brought up the idea of schedule scarcity, that there’s too many tournaments a year, that there’s no time for fans to miss it. But would the Tour, which for decades operated to provide playing opportunities for its membership, really slash the schedule and turn down sponsorship dollars? For that to happen, there’d need to be a sufficient business reason – and it’d require not just a reimagining but a revolution.
McIlroy mentioned the idea of getting the best players together more often – the very premise of these big-money signature events – but noted that there were still a handful of stars who currently, in this divided landscape, ply their trade elsewhere.
McIlroy was asked about slow play, an issue that has been around for eons but now, with fans’ shorter attention spans and changing media habits, has seemed to take on a renewed importance. Major League Baseball – perhaps the only sport that can rival golf in its insistence (stubbornness?) on preserving history and tradition – instituted a pitch clock in 2023 that has shaved about 30 minutes of game time. Could something similar be done in golf?
Maybe. It’s been done before, on the European tour. But slow play is a multifaceted issue. Sure, they could develop a shot clock, but unlike in an MLB stadium it’s difficult to govern, with the sport played by as many as 156 competitors all day long on a playing field that stretches across a half-dozen acres. And, yes, they will trim field sizes beginning next year, but that was a wildly controversial move that threatened players’ livelihoods. There’s limited daylight this time of year, condensing tee-time groupings with large fields. There’s technological advances that have stretched the playing field, necessitated conditions that push courses to the brink and created logjams with menacingly long par 3s and reachable par 5s. It goes on and on.
“I don’t know what the answer is,” McIlroy shrugged.
Scheffler back like he never left in 2025
Scottie Scheffler seems to have his hand injury completely behind him and looks to maintain his dominant 2024 form. Will it be the same for Xander Schauffele?
They all are reasonable ideas. They all might grow the fan base. They all might help the Tour prosper in this age of private equity and ROI. But they’re all still in conflict with the very essence of this tour – a tour whose foundation was not brand-builders but rather a stoic, humble star like Scottie Scheffler, who hasn’t signed up for TGL, who eschews social media, who keeps his private life private and who prefers – like Woods before him – that his brand of consistently excellent golf be enough.
“When I think about something that would be good for the game of golf, I think the more we can get back in the competition of things, I think that’s what’s best,” Scheffler said. “I never strived to be an entertainer. I’ve always loved playing golf. If people want to watch and enjoy, then come on out and have a good time. But I’m not going to put on a show or do anything crazy to try to get more people to watch more.
“At the end of the day, I think what people like is competition. I think the more we can stop talking about all of the other BS that’s going on in the game of golf – I’m sure a lot of the talking points in here are about pace of play and TGL and all this other stuff, and we’re playing Pebble Beach this week, one of the most beautiful and iconic golf courses in the world, and we’ve got some of the best players in the world competing. Like, let’s soak that in.”
That’s why, ultimately, McIlroy’s vision for Tour golf looks a lot like last year’s final round of the U.S. Open. It didn’t go his way that day, but that’s not the point. It was still the high point of the year: two mega-stars, on an iconic and challenging venue, battling for a massive prize, the entire golf world watching.
No one that day was clamoring for a shot clock, or a mid-round interview, or a team component. It was competition in its purest form. It was golf – modern golf – at its very best.
“There’s a lot of things about golf that are very different than other sports,” McIlroy said, “but I think that’s what makes it unique. 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. It’s been this way for hundreds of years. I really like the way golf is, and I think a lot of other people do, too.
“I still understand the critiques of how the entertainment product could get better … but, first and foremost, we’re professional golfers; we want to go out there and shoot the best score possible and try to beat each other. Hopefully people find that entertaining – and if not, then I don’t know what to tell them.”
