Rory McIlroy Has ‘Come a Long Way’ as a Leader on PGA Tour

Drawing a line on competing in the Premier Golf League and European Tour events in the Middle East, the world’s No. 1 player has become more comfortable speaking out. PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — It was 2009 and Rory McIlroy, then 20, was making his first appearance at the Players Championship, the tournament considered nearly as prestigious as a major golf championship.

McIlroy, a floppy-haired wunderkind at the time, recalled this week that his commitment to the 2009 event was at best scattered. He attended a prize fight in Las Vegas the weekend beforehand. The weekend of the tournament — after McIlroy was purged from the competition for shooting seven-over par — was misspent, as McIlroy said: “Getting kicked out of bars for having a fake ID. ” On Tuesday, with a smile and an Irishman’s developed sense of understatement, McIlroy, this year’s defending Players champion, added: “So I’ve come a long way.

” The retort applies to his golf results, but more authoritatively describes a newfound, off-course leadership role that McIlroy has assumed among his generally conservative, cautious peers. In recent months, McIlroy has stood apart by taking bold, principled stands within a community of athletes who are a loosely aligned group of circumspect self-employed entrepreneurs. In December, McIlroy shunned a lucrative tournament in Saudi Arabia that attracted other top golfers, citing Saudi human rights violations and adding: “There’s a morality to it. ” Last month, McIlroy soundly rejected the advances of the Premier Golf League, a moneyed, upstart rival to the PGA Tour that other top pros had been careful not to overtly rebuff.

McIlroy, the game’s top-ranked player, said he was defending every pro golfer’s right to autonomy. With a blunt, “I’m out,” McIlroy definitively stalled the Premier Golf League’s budding momentum. He did not want to take the new league’s money, because, he said: “They can tell you what to do. If don’t take the money, they can’t.

” Earlier this week, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, called McIlroy’s declaration, “a moment of leadership. ” Now weeks from his 31st birthday, McIlroy has become a notably frank, widely accessible and forthright voice on most every subject as it pertains to golf and the industry enveloping it. He does not expect that to change. “At this point, I think I have somewhat of a responsibility — not just for myself but for the other players,” McIlroy said.