PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — As the PGA Tour’s unofficial spokesman during the Tour-LIV controversy, Rory McIlroy hasn’t been short of opinions. And he’s been unafraid to criticize the Tour when warranted. On Tuesday, during his pre-tournament press conference ahead of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, McIlroy was asked whether there was a threat that LIV, TGL, YouTube golf’s influence – all of these golf adjacent offerings to the Tour’s core product – which are positioned as additive to the golf ecosystem, could actually diminish it.

“I think it already has been,” McIlroy mused. “You know, I think it already has been diminished.”

McIlroy said there’s space for different golf products but expressed concern for the game becoming overexposed.

“I can see when the golf consumer might get a little fatigued of everything that's sort of available to them. So to scale it back a little bit and maybe have a little more scarcity in some of the stuff that we do, like the NFL, I think mightn't be a bad thing,” he said. “I think 47 or 50 tournaments a year is definitely too many.”

McIlroy knows the Tour is evaluating the product it offers and changes to improve pace of play, create more media access and make its TV presentation more attractive to a younger audience – all initiatives that have resulted from its fan-forward efforts. But McIlroy doesn’t want to see change for change's sake.

“I don't think we should try to dumb down golf to appeal to more people. Golf is golf at the end of the day. It's been this way for hundreds of years,” he said. “You know, I really like the way golf is and I think a lot of other people do, too, but I still understand the critiques of how the entertainment product could get better. Hopefully people find that entertaining, and if not, then I don't know what to tell them.”

McIlroy is set to make his season debut this week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a place where he is making just his third appearance: he missed the cut with his dad as a partner in 2018 and finished T-66 as an individual last year, but did win the pro-am division with partner Jeff Rhodes.

“I got my name on the wall, just not the portion I wanted to,” cracked McIlroy, who finished T-9 at the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and missed the cut here at the 2010 U.S. Open.

McIlroy finished T-4 in his first worldwide start of the year at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic a few weeks ago. He also made his TGL debut in Florida last night, getting home about 9:35 p.m. He said he was in bed by 10 p.m., woke up at 5, took off at 7 and landed in Monterey at 9:30.

“And here I am,” he said. “It’s not too bad.”

Not bad at all. McIlroy also weighed in on the latest with the Tour-PIF negotiations, which continue to drag on without any resolution. He noted newly elected President Donald Trump coming into office could help usher a deal.

“I think the new administration are certainly going to be a bit more deal friendly, but like I'm not in those conversations, so I don't know. I would like to think that something happens pretty soon, but I've said that for the last two years,” he said.

More interesting was his response to the question of what is the biggest obstacle to a deal getting made?

“Last year I probably would have said that the Department of Justice and now that doesn't seem to be as of much of an obstacle anymore. I think from an investment standpoint, that deal should and will be done, but it doesn't solve the problem of what the landscape of golf looks like going forward,” he said. “I'd say the biggest impediment is maybe the differing visions of what golf should look like in the future.”

That’s a story for another day but as is typically the case, McIlroy had plenty to say on Tuesday at Pebble Beach.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Rory McIlroy believes PGA Tour product has been diminished