GULLANE, Scotland — Making up is hard.
Whereas Sergio Garcia recently went so far as to say that “I have that friend back,” a reference to his very public rift with Rory McIlroy over his defection to LIV last year, McIlroy wouldn’t quite go that far.
“We’ve talked, which is a first step,” McIlroy said.
The two European Ryder Cup teammates were such good friends that McIlroy was part of Garcia’s wedding party in 2017. But the friction of the feud between PGA Tour and LIV spilled over to their relationship in the past year with Garcia saying McIlroy “lacked maturity” at one point, and McIlroy admitting he had deleted Garcia’s number after he texted him during the 2022 RBC Canadian “basically telling me to shut up about LIV.”
With the framework agreement signed on June 6 between the Tour and PIF meant, in part, to repair the fractured relationship in professional, Garcia detailed how at the LIV London event that he and McIlroy reconnected after McIlroy interacted with Garcia’s wife, Angela, at the U.S. Open last month.
“The U.S. Open was a great event for me,” Garcia said. “I feel like I played well. But more than anything, because I gained a friend back, a friend that I kind of felt like I lost in the last year or so. We talked and we had a great conversation, and I feel like I have that friend back, and that to me means a lot. That’s a very positive thing.”
“Angela and Rory said ‘Hi’ to each other at the U.S. Open,” Garcia said. “And there was a nice text from Rory to her. That kind of gave me the go-ahead to reach out to him.
“I had been thinking about it for a while, but I wasn’t totally sure about it. And when I saw that reaction from him, he kind of gave me the go-ahead to get closer. We had a great chat. It was two friends that wanted to get back to that spot. That’s the most important thing.”
When asked Sunday during his Genesis Scottish Open winner’s news conference how happy he was to get his friendship with Garcia back, McIlroy said, “Yeah, there’s, you know, there’s things that we both think we probably could have done differently, and there’s a lot that’s went into it. You know, it’s good that we’re at least talking again. It’s a first step. I wouldn’t say we are all the way there but we are – it’s a good first step.”