The world of Golf was left bamboozled when it was announced that DP World Tour and PGA are set to merge with Saudi Arabia-backed LIV circuit. The merger especially felt like a massive betrayal to the likes of Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods who turned down $500,000,000 and $800,000,000 respectively from LIV to stay loyal towards PGA.
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Over the years, several top Golfers have lashed out at LIV for disrupting things at the PGA level. But no one has bashed the entity more than World No. 3 Rory McIlroy. In fact, as per the Guardian, after the merger was finalized, Rory stated that he felt like a scapegoat. Reacting to this, former NFL star Marcellus Wiley had a few things to say.
Marcellus Wiley feels bad for Rory McIlroy
Marcellus discusses a variety of topics on his YouTube channel and because the LIV-PGA merger has been the biggest news in Sporting world for the last few days, Wiley’s fiery reaction on the whole situation was imminent. The former DE stated that he feels for Rory McIlroy who refused a half a billion dollar deal from LIV, but is now compelled to be a part of their program.
“He(Rory) had too much bark. He just kept talking about people, talking about LIV Golf,” Wiley claimed, adding that the kind of personal attacks the Irishman was doing, he was afraid the star Golfer might have to eat his words and now, “he has to eat his words, $500 Million strong.”
Marcellus went on to add that one must not consider all Saudi Arabians as bad people. He claimed that while he is sympathetic about 9/11 and the human right issues in Saudi, “he always goes back to the grouping of that which he feels is not fair to the people who are running LIV.” Marcellus then went on to ask people to not hate Saudi, just because the country isn’t a strong ally of the United States.
Rory McIlroy feels like a scapegoat
As far as Rory is concerned, he definitely isn’t pleased with the merger. However, during an interaction with DP World Tour’s official website, he had stated that for the progress of the game, the merger is actually good. However, he then stated that the people who left PGA midway, should not be welcomed back as they are to be held accountable for its dire state.
“There still has to be consequences to actions. The people that left the PGA Tour irreparably harmed this tour, started litigation against it. We can’t just welcome them back in. That’s not going to happen. And I think that was the one thing that Jay [Monahan, the PGA Tour’s commissioner] was trying to get across yesterday is like, guys, we’re not just going to bring these guys back in and pretend like nothing’s happened,” Rory claimed.
The whole situation has surely landed Rory in a fix and to make matters even worse, both, him and Tiger weren’t even informed about the merger, until everything was finalized. It will be interesting to see how things pan out in the Golfing world in the time to come.
