Rory McIlroy has strengthened his ties with America’s most powerful family by playing with the President’s granddaughter Kai Madison Trump, just a month after enjoying a round with Donald Trump himself.
McIlroy, the world No 3, accompanied the highly-rated 17-year-old and her father Donald Trump Jnr in the pro-am of the Genesis Invitational, the $20 million PGA Tour event that starts at Torrey Pines in San Diego on Thursday. The tournament has moved this year from its traditional home at Riviera Country Club because of the wildfires that devastated areas of the Los Angeles metropolitan area last month.
Like everyone in the game, McIlroy knows all about the President’s granddaughter, who is soon enroling in Miami University after being lured by the faculty’s top golf team. Kai already has contracts worth more than $1 million and has earned positive reviews. She played in the pro-am of the LIV Golf Miami tournament last year, alongside her grandfather.
McIlroy said he enjoyed the experience, just as he did with Donald Trump, who he joined for 18 holes at the President’s Palm Beach course a few days before his inauguration on January 7. When talking to media following Wednesday’s pro-am, the Northern Irishman let slip that Trump does not like LIV format and is on the side of the PGA Tour, despite the President staging the Saudi-funded events at some of his courses.
Trump met with Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour’s commissioner, last week, and Adam Scott, one of the influential directors on the American circuit’s powerful players board.
Afterwards, Monahan expressed his belief that in agreeing to be involved with the negotiations with the Kingdom’s £750 billion Public Investment Fund – as the disputing parties seek to find a peace deal after more than 20 months of discussions – Trump will be a decisive factor.
Monahan’s confidence is two-fold. Firstly, because the President can obviously assist with any deal being given the green light by the US Department of Justice – which has been investigating the prospect of a merger on anti-competition grounds – and secondly because of Trump’s close relationship with the Saudis.
Not only with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the PIF governor and LIV chairman, but also with Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince, himself.
Commenting on the round he played with Trump a few days before last month’s inauguration, McIlroy was positive about the experience, despite stating in 2020, three years after he last played with Trump: “I haven’t done it since – out of choice”.
McIlroy said on Wednesday: “Yeah, it was really good. We had a good discussion. I learnt that he’s not a fan of the LIV format. I was like, ‘but you’ve hosted their events?’. He was like, ‘yeah, but it doesn’t mean that I like it’. So I think he’s on the Tour’s side.”
‘Trump can be influential’
Al-Rumayyan is seen as central to any settlement in golf’s civil war and McIlroy feels that Trump’s intervention could be crucial.
“He has direct access to Yasir’s boss,” McIlroy said. “Not many people can say, ‘I want you to get this deal done and by the way, I’m speaking to your boss and I’m going to tell him the same thing’.
“He [Trump] can be influential…. I don’t think people appreciate how much respect that he has in the Middle East. Whenever he says something they listen and I think that’s a big thing.”
While Monhan added insight into the aim of the talks: “It’s the reunification of the professional game on one tour, with all the best players on it.”
Even if a truce is reached and the PIF invests in the Tour, there would remain huge doubt about what happens to LIV in the new order. The breakaway league has continued to invest and has recently been recognised by the US Open and Open Championship, with both awarding it guaranteed berths for LIV players in their majors. Additionally, TV deals have been signed with Fox in the US and ITV in the UK.
However, McIlroy, who was for so long LIV’s most outspoken critic, struggles to see a future in which the PGA Tour and LIV can co-exist at full strength. “We all get together at the major championships and that’s been a really good thing, but for both tours it’s unsustainable,” he said.
