Rory McIlroy enjoyed a truly magnificent 2025 season on the PGA Tour and indeed on the DP World Tour.

Now it will be all about setting new goals for McIlroy, as he looks to regain the motivation that he lacked at times on the PGA Tour after his win at The Masters in April.

Earlier this year, McIlroy admitted he could skip big PGA Tour events whenever he feels like it.

“I’ll always look at the schedule at the start of the year and see what best fits me and my life, and everything else that I do with family or other opportunities that I’m pursuing outside of golf.

“This year that meant skipping a few signature events. [Next year] I might skip less, I might skip the same amount.

“The luxury of being a PGA Tour player is we’re free to pick and choose our own schedule for the most part. I took advantage of that this year and I’ll continue to take advantage of that for as long as I can.“

In fact, the PGA Tour were not happy with McIlroy back in August when the Northern Irishman decided to skip the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

However, professional golfers outside of LIV are independent contractors, so the PGA Tour really do not have a leg to stand on.

The PGA Tour predicted to be concerned over Rory McIlroy’s comments as his new goal becomes clear

Back in October, McIlroy made it very clear that he plans to play more of an ‘international schedule’ in 2026.

“I would say as time goes on, my schedule will get hopefully more international. Because that’s what I’ve enjoyed doing,“ McIlroy said.

“But I think over the last few years, I’ve enjoyed it even more. I’ve enjoyed the travel. I’ve enjoyed getting to play in front of people that I’ve never played in front of before. But it does, it fits really nicely.“

It was recently claimed that the PGA Tour could make a change to the minimum events required rule due to McIlroy’s interest in playing more tournaments across the globe.

Rex Hoggard has explained why he believes SSG would not have been happy with McIlroy’s recent comments about cutting back on his 2026 schedule, when speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lav.

He explained “There was some hand-wringing last week when he talked about rolling back his schedule and my guess is that people with SSG are going to be concerned by that.“

Lavner then responded with his opinion on the matter.

He said: “An incredible 2025, is it not? How could you possibly drop a better one? The golf courses on which he has won, the titles which he has won, the significant achievements.

“I mean, good Lord, he won at Pebble, he won the Players Championship at Sawgrass, he won The Masters obviously to complete the career Grand Slam, He became the sixth player of all time to do so.

“He won the Irish Open, remember the bomb that he made on the 72nd hole just to get into the playoff

“He won an away Ryder Cup which he had deemed one of the hardest things to do in golf, and now he’s going to wrap up the money title on the DP World Tour.

“You could not have drawn up a better 2025 for Rory McIlroy and to your point, he’s going to have around two months off now (from playing in America).

“We’re going to see him at the Optum Golf Channel Games December 17th at Trump National, Jupiter.

“I do think it will be very important for him to single out tournaments, venues, a schedule that can really optimize what he wants to do in 2026.“

Then Hoggard came back in with his final point.

Hoggard said: “Looking ahead, it’s going to be the major championships and he has talked about wanting to win an Olympic gold medal and that is on the horizon. The Ryder Cup is always going to interest him, going back to Ireland in 2027, so that one will be very important to him. So it’s not as though he’s ready to ride off into the sunset.“

Could there be a future without Rory McIlroy on the PGA Tour?

McIlroy seems to be much more relaxed when he’s playing back on the DP World Tour than when he’s competing on the PGA Tour in the United States.

He will clearly work his 2026 schedule around trying to peak for the major championships, and there is obviously nothing wrong with doing that.

The Northern Irishman will clearly play more events globally next year as well, while trimming down his PGA Tour schedule.

However, after SSG – a consortium of wealthy sports club owners – will surely not be happy if McIlroy does indeed not play as much on the PGA Tour next season, after investing around $3 billion in an effort to help reshape the Tour and give players equity ownership in the company.

Perhaps a new rule will come into play whereby players need to play in more than the current 15-tournament minimum in order to retain their cards.

If they do that and it doesn’t appeal to McIlroy, would it really be a surprise at all to see him wipe his hands of the PGA Tour?

It probably wouldn’t, taking his recent comments into consideration.