Rory McIlroy has seemingly gone all quite on anything to do with LIV Golf ahead of this week’s PGA Championship at Rochester in upstate New York.

The double PGA Championship winner from 2012 and 2014 faced the assembled media fielding 28 questions in his pre-tournament press conference.

Just two of those questions centered on LIV Golf, and while McIlroy has been the unofficial ‘voice’ of the PGA Tour for so long, not on this occasion.

Double PGA Championship winning Rory McIlroy faces the media at Oak Hill

The first question McIlroy faced was the fifth question from the media:

Q. We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of the first LIV Golf tournament. If you could look into your crystal ball three years from now, where do you think the professional game will be?
RORY McILROY: I don’t have a crystal ball.
Q. You don’t want to speculate?
RORY McILROY: No.

The only other LIV Golf related question McIlroy faced from those present came 16 questions later in his press conference.  It was not a new question but a second attempt to get better response to the earlier question he was asked on LIV Golf.

It didn’t work!

Q. You mentioned earlier about not having a crystal ball; obviously we all asked you a lot of questions about LIV, and you’ve spoken yourself recently about the burden of that. Is it going to be a conscious thing for you going forward to try and sidestep that narrative?
RORY McILROY: Yeah.

McIllroy’s virtual ‘no comment’ on LIV Golf at Rochester is in stark contrast to two months ago at Augusta National where he faced 29 questionf from the media ahead of the Masters.

Four of those questions LIV related and with McIlroy answering a first with 153 words, a second LIV question with 65v words, taking 45 words to address the third question and 79 words to answer the fourth, and the fourth with McIlroy being asked his reaction to Cam Smith’s remark that a LIV golf player ‘needed’ to win the Masters.

Of course, many observers post McIlroy’s 2023 Master meltdown singled out his high-profile criticism of LIV Golf, as a factor in missing the Augusta cut, and now after just using two words to answer two LIV related question we must wonder if this could be a turning point in McIlroy stepping aside from the continuing controversy that dominates the men’s professional game?

Many will be hoping it is.