Rory McIlroy Details What A Champions League Of Golf Would Look Like

Professional golf has long been moving towards more of a global stage, but that timeline has been sped up quite significantly given LIV Golf's emergence and distant separation from the PGA Tour. Rory McIlroy isn't the only one who is predicting this outcome, but he is the most-influential voice to actually lay out a vision of what the future of golf could very well turn into.

In January, speaking ahead of his season debut in Dubai, McIlroy mentioned what his dream scenario for an elite professional tour would look like.

"My dream scenario is a world tour, with the proviso that corporate America has to remain a big part of it all. Saudi Arabia, too. That’s just basic economics," McIlroy said.

"We could end up with something that resembles Formula One, but with a little more of an American presence. Throw in the four majors and you have a brilliant schedule for the top 70-100 guys, whatever the number is. We’d have, say a 22-event schedule. That would look pretty good to me."

(Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Those comments from McIlroy served as just the latest flip-flopping of opinions when it comes to Saudi influence in the sport. He has been consistently waving the white flag to the Saudis following Jon Rahm's departure for LIV Golf in December, even recently going as far as to say he shouldn't have judged players who left the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed circuit.

Rory McIlroy Is Thinking Globally

It's also worth mentioning that McIlory has announced plans to move from Florida to England in the near future, therefore, a more global schedule wouldn't exactly be as detrimental to him than say the players living in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, etc.

Just as the dust began to settle surrounding McIlroy's desire for a global tour came to light in early January, he was asked about it again following Saturday's third round at the Genesis Invitational. 

The Tour recently announced an agreement with Strategic Sports Group that will see the group of American investors invest $3 billion into the Tour, creating a new for-profit entity called PGA Tour Enterprises.

An investment of $3 billion changes things. While some players, including Tiger Woods, don't see a need for the agreed-upon framework with the Saudis to invest in the Tour at this time, McIlroy is of a differing opinion.

He sees these billions of dollars, and potentially billions more, as a way to make his dream scenario a reality and form something that resembles the Champions League in European soccer.

"I would think it would be one tour," McIlroy said. "I think you would just create a tour for the top 80 players in the world."

"Then I think everything sort of feeds up in that one," he continued. "The way I look at it, it would be like [the] Champions League in European football. It sort of sits above the rest of the leagues and then all those leagues sort of feed up into that and the best of the best play against each other in the Champions League is how I would think about it."

(USA TODAY/IMAGN)

Rory Maps Things Out

He even went into detail about certain countries that would need to be involved in hosting events.

"I think there has to be a component of the southern hemisphere, Australia, South Africa," McIlroy said. "There obviously has to be a component of the far east, whether that be Korea, Japan, China. Obviously the Middle East as well. We’ve been going to the Middle East for a long time, but obviously Dubai, Saudi (Arabia), and then sort of working our way from east to west and back into the United States for the sort of spring, summertime."

Again, this coming from McIlroy isn't shocking, he is very much the captain of Team Global Golf at this point.

Even if you take his opinion and game plan out of it, professional golf has been trending in this direction and only in this direction for years. The game isn't shrinking at any level, including the professional level, therefore expansion to other corners of the globe seems inevitable to some extent.