Rory McIlroy's LIV U-turn paving way for Northern Ireland star to join Saudi-backed league, says former agent Chubby Chandler

Chandler also said McIlroy’s previous stance as the PGA’s most outspoken critic of the breakaway circuit was ‘terrible for him’ and claimed the 34-year-old had lost fans as a result of his softening position on LIV Golf.

“It was terrible for him,” said Chandler. “He must have dreaded going into press conferences, to go through the diatribe he did.

“I firmly believe he was trying to do the right thing for the PGA Tour but why did he manage to put himself on the pedestal he did, and to allow that to happen?

“I think he lost a few fans; people got a bit fed up of Rory saying this, that and the other in the end. It was all engineered by the PGA Tour, that Rory would stand up for them.

“He definitely took his eye off the ball.”

On the prospect of McIlroy backtracking to pave the way for a mega-money move to join LIV, Chandler said it ‘looks a bit like that’.

“It looks a bit like that doesn’t it,” he added. “I'm not speaking from any knowledge or heard anything, but if you were looking at it from the outside he has done such a turn that you would think he is paving the way for it not to be too bad for him if he signs with LIV.

“LIV is here to stay. I fortunately have met Yasir Al-Rumayyan [governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund], I’ve had the benefit of time with him, and it was very, very interesting.

“He told me about the Newcastle United takeover before it all happened, they’ve got a lot of money and you can see what they are trying to do.

“Is it sport washing? It probably is, but it’s only what other countries do,” Chandler said in an interview with InstantCasinos.com.

“Everybody talks about Saudi now, whether it be tennis, snooker. I see snooker is going there with a £2million prize money. I’m not sure they play for £2million that often.

“They are at least putting themselves out there and on the map. Some of the things they get wrong in Saudi will be put right because they’ve got all this international sport.

“I came to South Africa during the apartheid years, I don’t think us coming to South Africa did anything but help the situation, rather than harm it.

“For everybody to come round to getting things right, LIV had to go through the spell it has gone through, and now it is beginning to get there.

“Golf has had to suffer to get to where it needs to get to. What we cannot underestimate is that massive change that has happened over the last two years, and that LIV have managed to survive that and have got a product that people are starting to understand,” he added.

“People are understanding that the good players on LIV are still good players. DJ [Dustin Johnson] won in Vegas just like he won when he was on the PGA Tour, he didn’t look any different, he was focused and intense.

“People also need to realise that the PGA Tour and LIV are not the same thing, it’s not the same form of golf. It’s like a T20 cricket compared to a Test match.”

McIlroy said he would ‘rather retire’ than make the switch to Greg Norman’s rebel tour.

However, following the decision of Ryder Cup team-mates Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton to jump ship, McIlroy adopted a less critical stance, claiming he had been ‘too judgmental’ of those players who had been lured by huge money deals to join LIV.