Rory McIlroy fires back at Kevin Kisner’s claim that he was only playing in India for the money

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Don’t look now, but there’s another war of words brewing in the game of golf. On a new episode of the Fore Play podcast lastw week, Kevin Kisner took a shot at Rory McIlory, calling B.S. on the idea that the back-to-back Masters champion was playing at the DP World India Championship solely to “grow the game.”

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“That is such a dog sh!t comment,” Kisner said in regards to McIlroy’s comments about expanding the reach of golf in India. “But I guess for the right price, we could all say that comment (about growing the game). He doesn’t want to globally expand in India, he wants to get his $10 million bucks and go play in India …

I know there’s a pile of guys that got paid for that event. How else would you get that event in India with eight billion people in the middle of the city? And Rory’s not even hitting a driver this week. You think he wants to go play a tournament where he can’t use his number one weapon? So give me a break.”

Needless to say, the NBC analyst (who, it’s worth noting, launched his new golf lifestyle brand Hobby last week and had invested interest in going viral) didn’t pull any punches. In fact, they were so pointed that they made it all the way to New Delhi on Sunday, where a reporter asked McIlroy for his thoughts on Kisner’s rant. McIlroy, who claimed he hadn’t seen or heard the comments, had this to say.

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“Two things can be true at the same time,” McIlroy replied, tacitly admitting to being paid an appearance fee last week, a common practice in professional golf. “People can get paid to come and play at a tournament, but at the same time, do it from a place of—you know, a genuine interest in trying to bring the sport to a developing country. A country where the middle class is larger than whole population of the United States. It’s a huge market for golf.” McIlroy’s reply was essentially, “so what?” If the ends—potentially getting a younger generation of Indians playing the game of golf—justify the means—paying big-name players to play and draw fan interest—then what’s the big deal? Kisner would probably argue that the issue is not the ends nor the means, but the charade of it all. To some extent, McIlroy seems to have put that to rest by revealing he was, in fact, paid to play in India … or at least we hope so, because the last thing golf needs right now is another beef.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com