Rory McIlroy’s future could be very different than you think

The phony clip went viral in October, just weeks after Rory McIlroy endured a weekend of ridicule that left him declaring he was done with golf in the United States. Never mind that the backdrop came from an event five years prior, or that McIlroy wore clothes that were hilariously out of vogue.

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McIlroy, his voice heavy with hurt, seemed resigned that there was no coming back from what he suffered at Bethpage, that certain lines can’t be crossed and his had been violated. His words were intercut with real footage of the abuse he absorbed at the Ryder Cup, along with clips from the Masters, where he'd finally seized what he'd been chasing for a decade, and we say “real” because what was being said was fake, generated by an AI tool. Judging by the video’s 18 million views as of this writing, the manipulation worked. Savvy sleuths eventually exposed the forgery. But they couldn't dismiss the truth buried inside it.

Because while American fans haven't seen the last of McIlroy, they're almost certainly going to be seeing less of him. In the afterglow of his grand slam triumph in 2025, McIlroy stands at a career inflection point. The question isn't what he wants to achieve anymore. It's what he wants to leave behind—and where he wants to leave it.

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Rory McIlroy celebrates making an eagle on the 18th green to win the Irish Open.

Sam Barnes

“If everyone is talking about growing the game,” McIlroy said in 2024, “especially if these investors are going to come into our game and they want a return on their capital, I think everyone needs to start thinking more globally around it.” The Ulsterman later added: “If golf doesn’t [embrace a global platform] now, I fear that it will never do it and we’ll sort of have this fractured landscape forever.”

McIlroy can do little about the fracture that now enters its fifth year, but where the 35-year-old five-time major winner holds control, he's backed up his words with action. He became a truly world traveler this past year. Beyond his usual Middle East bookends for the DP World Tour season and the tour's flagship event in England, he ventured to India for the first time, returned to Australia after a decade's absence and competed in six national opens—capped by a victory at the Irish Open in September. Yes, he still played most of his golf in the United States. But outside the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, McIlroy made his fewest PGA Tour starts since 2017, when a rib injury sidelined him for months. He skipped several signature events. He sat out the opening FedEx Cup Playoffs tournament in Memphis. That cadence isn't likely an aberration; it's a blueprint.

The foundation for this shift is literal. McIlroy has a new home. He and his family relocated to the London area earlier this year, driven by several factors: his family's preference for cooler weather, his desire for better work-life balance and his need to strengthen his connection to his roots. McIlroy is keeping his Jupiter, Fla., property, but he's made it clear that the U.K. is the primary residence now. The implication is unavoidable. One-off PGA Tour events outside the majors and tentpoles will likely grow scarcer.

Then there's the hard math that, in the very near future, fewer American events will exist to play in. As Golf Digest reported this fall, the PGA Tour is moving toward a drastically reduced schedule and sources familiar with the tour say the concept has real momentum. While appearance minimums have been floated to retain status, McIlroy won't need to chase them. His recent Players and Masters victories have banked him years of exemptions. He can choose his spots.

The deeper fracture is political. This has nothing to do with the Ryder Cup; McIlroy understands that mob at Bethpage doesn't represent the galleries at most tour events (although it’s worth noting McIlroy had several fan run-ins this year). This is personal, a wound that cuts to questions of loyalty and sacrifice.

There's little need to relitigate the early days of professional golf's civil war, when McIlroy became the PGA Tour's de facto frontman amid a leadership vacuum. He shouldered that weight, absorbing blows meant for others, defending an institution that claimed to share his values … only to watch that same institution betray him a year later with a blindsiding framework agreement. What hasn't been fully unpacked is what came after: the conflict between McIlroy and tour leadership in 2024. When McIlroy resigned from the policy board in late 2023, he cited personal and professional commitments, but he also believed his job was finished as a deal with PIF and private equity seemed imminent. Months passed. Progress stalled. McIlroy tried to return to the board, only to find his path blocked by a contingent of vocal players. Their concerns were understandable: McIlroy's evolving stance on PIF, his connections to Fenway Sports Group, the fact that he'd resigned from an elected position. But to McIlroy, the message was clear: He'd sacrificed to protect the tour's present, and now he was locked out of its future.

Rory McIlroy shakes hands with DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings.

Andrew Redington

Which brings us to his relationship with the DP World Tour, a connection marked by distance, then rekindling, now something closer to fidelity. McIlroy's rapport with his home circuit has been complicated. He bristled at what he considered soft course setups. His relationship with tour brass never quite warmed. But mostly, it was geography: He lived in America, and America became his priority. Yet even in absentia, he's  the tour's career money leader at €67,817,762, nearly double No. 2 Lee Westwood, and he has managed to capture seven Order of Merit titles, just one shy of Colin Montgomerie's all-time mark. A ghost who kept winning.

As McIlroy has aged, his intrigue in the European circuit has deepened, sources close to both McIlroy and the tour say. Part of that means playing more DP World Tour events, understanding he remains the tour's greatest draw. "There's a wonderful heritage to this tour," McIlroy said in November. "I think with the fractured nature of the men's professional game at the minute, this tour needs all of its stars to step up and play in the big events. I understand that I am one of those people and I want to do my utmost to help in whatever way that I can. I feel quite a responsibility to do that. And to try to make this tour as strong as it can possibly be."

Yet the shift isn't purely philosophical. McIlroy has found a genuine ally in new DP World Tour chief Guy Kinnings, whom he believes is fully invested in the tour's health. McIlroy also relishes the backroom work of shaping professional golf's future. If the PGA Tour won't have him at the table, he's more than willing to build a different one.

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That's the macro view. The micro matters just as much. McIlroy's competitive fire ignites when he plays national opens, exploring new territories and cultures. There's also a legacy calculation given his rare standing. McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm are the only top players with true global gravitational pull. Yet Rahm, even with the DP World Tour's olive branch extended to LIV defectors, skipped the circuit's playoffs for a four-month sabbatical. DeChambeau only tees up if YouTube cameras are rolling. Scheffler has been the superior player over the past four years, yet he's made clear he has zero interest in venturing beyond the PGA Tour's American borders. Those around McIlroy insist he feels genuine responsibility to spread the game while understanding that, with his 40th birthday on the horizon, the window is closing. McIlroy has an opportunity to cement a legacy as the sport's premier globetrotter—a fusion of Gary Player's international résumé with Arnold Palmer's magnetism. That's not a legacy you turn down.

What this means, practically, is a truncated American schedule. The three U.S.-based majors and the Players Championship remain certainties. There will likely be a handful of tentpole events—Pebble Beach, Riviera, perhaps Quail Hollow given his success there—and the FedEx Cup Playoffs. That could be the extent of it.

Among great players, McIlroy has precedent. Tiger Woods played a limited schedule even before injuries forced the issue. Jack Nicklaus rarely exceeded 15 appearances in his late thirties and early forties. Ernie Els and Greg Norman seldom played more than 20 events during their primes. But what separates McIlroy's calculation from theirs is he’s not winding down. As he approaches his third decade as a professional, having conquered everything the game offers, McIlroy isn't chasing rest but expansion. He is betting his final chapters will be written in a language the sport hasn't spoken fluently in decades—truly global, genuinely unbounded, and entirely on his terms.