Rory McIlroy wasted no time reopening golf's ugliest wound. Speaking to reporters Wednesday ahead of the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, the world No. 2 questioned whether LIV Golf's biggest names have earned any leverage in negotiating a path back to the PGA Tour.

"I would argue, have they brought value to LIV?" McIlroy said, according to Golf.com. "I think the PGA Tour's in a really good spot."

The comments land at a fraught moment for the Saudi-backed circuit, whose future has been thrown into doubt after its financial backers pulled support, fueling speculation that marquee names such as Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau could eventually seek a way back to the Tour they left behind.

A Closing Window

McIlroy pointed to the special returning-member pathway that Brooks Koepka accepted back in February as a deal that is unlikely to be repeated on the same terms for whoever comes next.

"I would say it's going to be a tough road back," McIlroy said.

He added that any future arrangement for returning defectors would almost certainly be less generous than the one Koepka negotiated, and that players like Patrick Reed — eligible to petition for return as soon as September — face an uncertain welcome.

It's a familiar posture for McIlroy, long the Tour's most outspoken defender against the rival league. He reiterated Wednesday that LIV "has never been a good thing for the game," even while conceding the Tour could have handled the initial threat more deftly and acknowledging real jobs and livelihoods were upended by the split.

The remarks come as the BMW Championship — the second leg of the FedExCup Playoffs, carrying a $20 million purse — gets underway Thursday with a 50-man field battling to survive to next week's Tour Championship. McIlroy, fresh off a runner-up finish behind Scottie Scheffler's runaway win at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, will again be chasing the FedExCup and PGA Tour Player of the Year honors on a course stretched to 7,448 yards.

Whether McIlroy's skepticism becomes Tour policy remains to be seen — reunification talks involving the PGA Tour, LIV and the Public Investment Fund have dragged on for more than two years without resolution. But his comments make clear that even if the door to LIV defectors eventually opens, some of the Tour's biggest stars aren't in a hurry to roll out the welcome mat.