The McIlroy team are preparing to make much of how McIlroy signed his contract on the day of Horizon’s 2011 Christmas party "in circumstances of great informality" and with Mclroy not obtaining any independent legal advice. In other words, the suggestion is that they were taking advantage of a certain naivety on the part of their incoming client.
That allegation would clearly have held rather more water had this been McIlroy’s first experience of management men. However, the fact that he had taken it upon himself to terminate his ISM contract would lead many to believe that he was pretty sure of what he wanted second time around and that he was hardly signing in the dark.
Though McIlroy has maintained that Ridge was primarily concerned with "maximising his own share of any commission", the truth is that the percentages on which the two parties agreed were no more than the going rate. The only reason tongues wagged was because the sums involved were so vast.
It goes without saying that there are all sorts of minor skirmishes besides. Such, for example, as Horizon gifting US$166,000 of McIlroy’s money without the player’s approval to UNICEF. And McIlroy wanting that money to be returned to his account.
To expand, in the aftermath of his meltdown at the 2011 Masters, McIlroy had visited the earthquake-devastated island of Haiti in his role as a UNICEF ambassador. It came naturally to him to do and say all the right things and the organisation was greatly cheered when he offered to make a return trip at the start of 2013.
McIlroy had every intention of following through with that promise, only when his ’13 season got off to such wretched beginnings, he decided he could not afford the time. He said he would fix up something for later.
Ridge handed over the money to UNICEF by way of a peace-offering and there are many in the management game who believed that he did his man a favour.
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