Sergio Garcia blames Rory McIlroy’s lack of ‘maturity’ for feud after LIV Golf jump

Sergio Garcia’s friendship with Rory McIlroy is over after his jump to LIV Golf, and Garcia isn’t taking any of the blame.

Garcia, ahead of LIV Golf’s season opener this week in Mexico, told The Telegraph that while he is sad that his long standing friendship with McIlroy is over, it was McIlroy who “lacked maturity” at the end.

“I think it is very sad,” Garcia said. “I think that we’ve done so many things together and had so many experiences that for him to throw that away just because I decided to go to a different tour, well, it doesn’t seem very mature; lacking maturity, really.

“But Rory’s got his own life and he makes his own choices, the same way that I make mine. I respect his choices, but it seems like he doesn’t respect the ones I make. So a one-way street.”

Garcia: ‘He’s the one that has a problem’

Rory McIlroy has been perhaps the strongest opponent of LIV Golf since even before its first season kicked off last year.

Garcia, the former Masters champion and former teammate of McIlroy’s in the Ryder Cup, was one of the first to jump to the controversial Saudi Arabian-backed golf league. Garcia aired out his frustrations with the Tour and the DP World Tour when he did so, too, saying that he wanted “to play where I feel loved.”

McIlroy, on the other hand, has railed against LIV Golf and its CEO, Hall of Famer Greg Norman. McIlroy was drawn into the legal battle between the two leagues, too, after Patrick Reed’s lawyer hit him with a subpoena on Christmas Eve. McIlroy and Reed then feuded throughout the DP World Tour’s Dubai Desert Classic earlier this year.

McIlroy said that his relationship with Garcia ended after he received a text last year where Garcia was “basically telling me to shut up about LIV, blah, blah blah,” per the report.

“I was pretty offended and sent him back a coupe of daggers and that was it,” he said, via The Telegraph.

It’s unclear how the two will interact, if they do at all, at The Masters in April. Garcia insisted on Thursday that he’s willing to talk with McIlroy again, but he’s not the one who will be apologizing.

“I don’t have a problem with him. He’s the one that has a problem,” Garcia said Thursday. “So if he wants to reconcile, then I’m willing to talk, but I’m not sure he’ll pull himself down to that level.”