Rory McIlroy recently came under fire from Kevin Kisner for showing up to play in India.

The career Grand Slam winner played the DP World India Championship for the second straight year, as he eyes his record-tying eighth Race to Dubai title on the DP World Tour. 

Speaking on the Fore Play podcast, golf analyst Kisner was sceptical about why McIlroy was playing in India. He said, “He doesn’t want to globally expand in India; he wants to get his $10 million bucks and go play in India.”

But looking back at McIlroy’s old comments from when LIV Golf was first created shows Kisner’s opinion is total nonsense. 

What Rory McIlroy said about LIV Golf’s money

When LIV Golf was first forming, players were playing for eye-watering sums of money in the PIF Invitational in the Middle East. This was a DP World Tour-sanctioned event, so many of the players who eventually remained loyal to the PGA Tour played. 

Shane Lowry and Tommy Fleetwood were among them, but not McIlroy. The Northern Irishman said that no amount of money could convince him to play in an event he didn’t want to play. 

“Even when I started to get appearance fees back in 2009 or whatever, I struggled with that, going to tournaments in Korea and Japan feeling like I had already won before I teed it up and had to get over that mental battle of that as well.

“My own views on the Saudi thing remain unchanged. It’s not something that I would want to do but again, that’s more to do with the fact that I like being my own boss.

“I don’t want to be told what to do; I don’t want to be told where to show up, when to show up. You have so many events, you have to travel here. It’s nice to be able to take a couple weeks off. That’s the nice thing.”

Four years ago, McIlroy turned down huge sums to play in the PIF Invitational, but now he’s only playing in India for the money? That simply doesn’t check out. By now, we should all have learned that McIlroy will play where he wants to play.