In some of his strongest comments yet, Rory McIlroy called for Greg Norman to step aside as LIV Golf commissioner.

“Greg needs to go,” McIlroy told reporters Tuesday ahead of the DP World Tour’s season-ending event in Dubai. “He needs to exit stage left.

“He’s made his mark, but I think now is the right time to say you’ve got this thing off ground. No one’s going to talk unless there’s an adult in the room that can actually try to mend fences.”

McIlroy’s public remarks come a week after the Telegraph reported that LIV Golf was poised to replace Norman with former TaylorMade executive Mark King, a scenario that had been rumored for months but LIV now denies.

LIV completed its inaugural season and is set to begin the full league format with 14 events in 2023. As the tour frontman, Norman has ignited a series of controversies as LIV has yet to land either a domestic broadcast partner or corporate sponsors. His Saudi-backed circuit is currently embroiled in a pair of lawsuits, against both the PGA Tour and DP World Tour.

“Nothing can happen if those two things are going on,” McIlroy said. “Right now, it is a bit of a stalemate.”

McIlroy expressed “fear for the game” when all of the best players aren’t all together on one tour. He said that he didn’t anticipate 2023 to be as contentious, with all 48 LIV players locked in throughout the year. The court case involving the DP World Tour is set to begin in February, which will determine whether the circuit can ban LIV players and thus make them ineligible for the Ryder Cup. It also remains to be seen whether the majors will alter their qualification criteria to account for the LIV defections.

“I don’t think we will have another year like this one because all of the noise has been about who is jumping ship, who is going where, who is staying, who is going,” McIlroy said. “Very little of the storyline has actually been about the golf. So I think next year, if we can get the storylines to being about the golf and what’s happening on the course, that’s a good thing.”