Rory McIlroy’s best answer of his U.S. Open press conference was his final one.

McIlroy, the 2011 champion at Congressional, will make his second U.S. Open start at Shinnecock Hills this week in New York after missing the cut in 2018. He was 6 over after 5 holes that week and could never recover. He called it a great golf course that involves a lot of strategy, but it’s also one that requires patience and has some of the toughest greens in the world, a challenge that only gets more difficult with winds like are expected Thursday.

But as McIlroy wrapped up his press conference, he was asked ahead of PGA Tour commissioner Brian Rolapp’s press conference next week about what some of the negatives of the new schedule could be, and he didn’t mince words.

“I guess, just recency, an event like last week, the Canadian Open, potentially going to one of these Track 2s. Track 2 is a glorified Korn Ferry event. That’s what Track 2 is going to be,’ McIlroy said. “So, I don’t think the Canadian Open should be one of those.”

There’s no confirmation what events will be in Track 1 or Track 2 of the new PGA Tour schedule, which is moving to a two-track system with 16 or so Track 1 events with elevated purses and bigger tournaments while the remainder fall into the Track 2 category, events with lower purses that players can each Track 1 status from.

Next week, Rolapp is expected to give an update on the PGA Tour’s progress on the new schedule, his first time providing clarity since the Players Championship in March. While McIlroy’s comments might seem harsh, at first, he’s also not wrong.

“I just think there’s going to be certain events that might lose their stature if a sponsor doesn’t pony up $30 million,” McIlroy continued. “So that’s the tough thing.”

McIlroy admitted he’s going to continue to play his schedule and focus on his game, not worrying too much about the future schedule. In 2026, McIlroy has made only seven starts on Tour and hasn’t played enough qualifying rounds to be included in the season-long statistics.

All of these changes are happening because of the fallout from LIV Golf bursting on the scene and rapidly changing the professional golf landscape. Now, as LIV Golf seems on the precipice of extinction while grasping for any lifeline it can, McIlroy wonders why so much was changed in the first place.

“Like I think, as they’ve done all this work, you start to realize that the way the Tour was before LIV came along was actually pretty good,” McIlroy said. “It was a pretty good structure, and everything sort of worked pretty well.

“LIV created this false economy where we had to up prize funds and had to cut fields and try to support the top players and all that stuff, which I think needed to happen because that was the only way to retain talent at the time, but now that LIV looks like it’s less of a threat, I think, as I said, the old ways of the PGA Tour weren’t actually that bad.”

Article originally appeared on: Golfweek.usatoday.com