{"id":123070,"date":"2025-08-06T07:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T07:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/123070\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T07:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T07:53:09","slug":"rory-mcilroys-absence-in-playoff-event-has-official-concerned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/123070\/","title":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy&#8217;s absence in playoff event has official &#8216;concerned&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-player-guid=\"65575c5e-0ef2-9f58-6495-42da8638a332\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/3470\/rory-mcilroy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rory McIlroy<\/a>&#8216;s decision to skip the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs &#8212; the FedEx St. Jude Classic &#8212; has left a PGA Tour Policy Board player director &#8220;very concerned&#8221; and could potentially lead to rule changes moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>The world No. 2 and reigning Masters champion took advantage of a loophole in the new playoff format and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/story\/_\/id\/45882262\/rory-mcilroy-not-field-pga-tour-fedex-st-jude\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">decided not to play in the event this week<\/a>. The top 70 in the FedEx Cup qualify &#8212; Rory is currently No. 2 &#8212; for the St. Jude, with the top 50 then moving on to the BMW Championship before the top 30 vie for the Tour Championship.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/story\/_\/id\/45882262\/rory-mcilroy-not-field-pga-tour-fedex-st-jude\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1754466789_212_r1346582_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;Very concerned,&#8221; <a data-player-guid=\"b63fb47a-7094-7b2c-767e-7d5bba26fdfd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/5692\/peter-malnati\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Malnati<\/a>, a player director on the PGA Tour Policy Board, told reporters Tuesday about a top player skipping a FedEx Cup playoff event. &#8220;I think there is stuff in the works [to keep it from happening again] and I&#8217;ll leave it at that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>McIlroy, if he chose, could also sit out the BMW and still advance to the final event at East Lake, where all competitors will start at even par this year after changing from a starting-strokes format.<\/p>\n<p>There also is precedence. <a data-player-guid=\"b967ea91-ed2c-fad0-cf10-ba1dda3f869e\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/462\/tiger-woods\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tiger Woods<\/a> (twice) and <a data-player-guid=\"6f8b009c-9f81-7079-27a5-457613fd8d29\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/153\/jim-furyk\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Furyk<\/a> have both skipped the first playoff event and have gone on to win the FedEx Cup Championship.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You might have one, two guys do that for an event, but I don&#8217;t think it will become a thing because they are still huge events against the best players in the world,&#8221; <a data-player-guid=\"95a7c5d1-0ce2-473f-3221-d718985f576b\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/5467\/jordan-spieth\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jordan Spieth<\/a>, who previously served as a PGA Tour Policy Board player director, told reporters, according to GolfWeek. &#8220;I think they&#8217;re trying to figure out how to make sure you don&#8217;t skip both of them and ideally neither of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>McIlroy hasn&#8217;t played since tying for seventh at the Open Championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy&#8216;s decision to skip the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs &#8212; the FedEx St. Jude&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":123071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1430,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-123070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114980743129161891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}