It’s not the greatest look for the PGA Tour and its playoff format that Rory McIlroy is blowing off the first leg of the three-tournament bonanza.
And one influential Tour veteran is not pleased about the reigning Masters champion’s absence.
“Very concerned,” Peter Malnati, one of the player directors on the PGA Tour Policy Board, told Golfweek.
There’s currently no deterrent for such a move for someone in McIlroy’s position.
The 36-year-old Grand Slam champion is in second place in the FedEx Cup standings with 3,444 points, well behind Scottie Scheffler, who had 4,806 points after winning two majors this year, and well ahead of third-place Sepp Straka (2,595).
The top 50 finishers at this week’s St. Jude Championship in Memphis move on to the second leg, next week’s BMW Championship, where the top 30 finishers then qualify for the Tour Championship.
This year’s Tour Championship will begin with all 30 participants starting at even par, so even if McIlroy also skips the BMW Championship, he’ll have as good of a chance as the rest of the field at winning the playoffs.
Will the PGA Tour institute changes that would penalize golfers for skipping playoff events in the future?
“I think there is stuff in the works and I’ll leave it at that,” Malnati told Golfweek.
Webb Simpson, who’s also on the Policy Board, sounded skeptical such measures would be taken.
“I think it’s too hard of a thing to make guys have to play. We’re still a sport where you can play when you want to play,” Simpson told the outlet.
McIlroy finished second-to-last in last year’s St. Jude Championship and told the Telegraph in November he was likely skipping the event this year.
“I mean, I finished basically dead last there this year, and only moved down one spot in the playoff standings,” he said at the time.
McIlroy already earned $10 million in bonus money for regular-season performance.
The winners of the St. Jude and BMW get $3.6 million, while the Tour Championship winner gets $10 million.
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