Rory McIlroy Calls on Jon Rahm & Tyrrell Hatton to Pay DP World Tour Fines

If the geopolitical world is encountering its own turbulence, the world of golf – for the main part – has started to find some equilibrium with Rory McIlroy providing some words of wisdom in urging his Europe Ryder Cup colleagues Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton to pay any due fines to the DP World Tour in enabling greater stability going forward. McIlroy – who is competing in the Hero Dubai Desert Classic at the Emirates Golf Club in the UAE, some 20 years after he first played in the tournament as an amateur on a sponsor’s invitation – acknowledged that the different tours, primarily the DP World Tour’s and the PGA Tour’s ongoing differences with LIV, have some way to go to find a sure-fire solution to any reunification. “I don’t see a world where the two or three sides or whoever it is will give up enough. Like for reunification to happen, every side is going to feel like they will have lost, where you really want every side to feel like they have won. I think they are just too far apart for that to happen ... I just don’t see a world where it can happen at this point,” said McIlroy. But McIlroy, the world number two, advocated the payment of any fines due by Rahm and Hatton to the DP World Tour to enable them play in future Ryder Cups – with the legal process ongoing on that particular issue – would send out a positive message. As McIlroy put it of that gesture being in the hands of Rahm and Hatton, “Look, this is my opinion. We went really hard on the Americans about being paid to play the Ryder Cup, and we also said that we would pay to play in Ryder Cups. There’s two guys that can prove it.” On the bigger picture of reunification, which would appear remote even with Brooks Koepka’s return from LIV to the PGA Tour, McIlroy reiterated a desire to find a way for the world’s top players to compete more often outside of the four majors: “Golf would be better served if all the best players in the world played together a little more often than they do. You know, we’re really only seeing that four times a year at the Major championships. But you’re talking about a handful of guys that are missing, say, a Players Championship or some of the other bigger tournaments in the world. I’d like to see the best players play together maybe 10 times a year instead of four times a year.” For this week, McIlroy is back on familiar terrain having won the Desert Classic on four occasions, looking to back up a solid tied-third place start to his season in the Dubai Invitational last week, but also looking ahead to future career boxes to tick following his achievement of winning the Masters last season to complete the career Grand Slam. Of those future career goals, McIlroy responded: “An Olympic medal. The Open at St Andrews ... and maybe a US Open at one of those old, traditional golf courses whether it’s Shinnecock this year or Winged Foot or Pebble Beach, [or] Merion. I would say those but when you keep doing things, the goal goalposts moving and you just keep finding new things that you want to do.” McIlroy – who has added new driver, irons and golf ball to his bag for the season – has also sought to embrace the joy of playing rather than tour life being a grind: “I think I need to show up at tournaments with enthusiasm every single time, feeling like I’m at a tournament because I’m obligated or have to be there but because I want to be there. “I’ve been coming here [to Dubai] for 20 years. You just think about the amount of balls that I’ve hit and the amount of time I’ve spent on the range on my own. That starts to get tedious 20 years into a career. So, it’s like trying to find the joy in that. “What I really found joy in I feel like at home is playing golf. I definitely spend more time on the golf course than on the practice range nowadays, and that’s something I’ve started to really, really enjoy. It’s basically not make it feel like a job, you know.”