With the PGA Tour returning after a Christmas break and the new opponent backed by Saudi Arabia Golf LIV With the series set to kick off its 2023 schedule on February 24, you might think peace has broken out in the world of professional golf.
rethink In fact, golf’s civil war is threatening to boil over.
In court, LIV Golf is now trying to determine whether the PGA Tour was responsible Funding of anti-Saudi protests held by groups such as 9/11 Justice and 9/11 Families United outside LIV golf events last year, including one at Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster, NJ.
in return, the PGA Tour claimed that LIV Golf, through an outside company, compiled a dossier on these protests — which, given Saudi Arabia’s track record with people who disagree, is troubling to say the least.
Meanwhile, Masters organizers at Augusta also extended invitations to this year’s competition to up to 16 current LIV golfers, including six former Masters champions, despite being indefinitely suspended by the PGA Tour for enrolling on a rival tour golf. Why; Because the people of the Masters are a law unto themselves and can invite anyone they want.
LIV Golf dropped on the sport like a brick through a window in 2021, signing up a host of top players with the promise of unimaginable profits and leaving the PGA Tour to play catch-up.
Fronted by former world number one golfer Greg Norman, he is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Private Investment Fund (PIF), a sovereign wealth fund with nearly $700 billion in assets and headed by the country’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman — the man the CIA believes played a key role in the brutal killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October 2018.
It is strange; Amnesty International has called Saudi Arabia’s human rights record “abysmal”.
this week, Pro golfer Harry Higgs told Golfweek that in a way LIV Golf did the PGA Tour a favor because “they got all the a-holes. They got all the bad guys.” But as the 31-year-old also pointed out, this is also a real problem for the PGA Tour because “they took some of our best players as well.”
Is true.
While the PGA Tour and its Commissioner Jay Monahan work to maintain the moral high ground, their product has begun to lose its luster — especially now that key players like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed have been bailed out. .
Sure, the PGA Tour has some great talent, including Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Scottie Scheffler and the man leading the charge against LIV Golf, Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy. But aside from the occasional miscue caught on camera or a golf club thrown awkwardly aside, there aren’t exactly “bad guys” on the PGA Tour, which, in turn, doesn’t exactly make for the most exciting sports spectacles.
It doesn’t help that Tiger Woods—perhaps the only golfer who could carry the entire sport and someone who turned down a nearly billion-dollar offer to join LIV—remains absent from the PGA Tour after suffering serious leg injuries in 2021.
On the other hand, you have LIV Golf, an organization whose bottomless budget means they can buy any player they want just by waving a fairly large check under their noses. It doesn’t matter if you’re a golf legend like Phil Mickelson, signed for $200 million, or a lesser-known name like, say, Pat Perez – there’s more than enough cash to tempt any player, except maybe Woods and McIlroy.
Peres is an interesting case. When the 46-year-old pro signed for LIV last June, he was one of the few players who openly said he was doing it for the money, nothing more, nothing less.
In his first season, his highest finish in any LIV event was 16th, and yet he still walked away with more than $8 million in prize money. Add that to his reported $10 million signing bonus, and he’s made nearly as much money in just six months as he has in a 25-year, 515-event career on the PGA Tour.
Talk to him about human rights abuses as he combs his mullet and counts his cash.
Whatever you think of LIV Golf, its players or its ownership, its impact has been seismic. He even urged the PGA Tour to introduce the types of long-overdue compensation reforms that could have prevented these high-profile layoffs.
Check out the recent Tournament of Champions in Kapalua, Hawaii. In 2022, before the LIV, Australian Cameron Smith (now a LIV Golf player), received $1.4 million for the win. Last weekend, when Spain’s Jon Rahm triumphed, he took home $2.7 million.
If the controversial soccer World Cup in Qatar taught us anything, it’s that, ultimately, the vast majority of fans and players don’t care much about where an event is held or where the money comes from.
The English Premier League football club Newcastle United is a prime example. When the Saudi-backed PIF bought the club in October 2021, there was outrage in the wider game over the deal. Fast forward just over a year and the team has gone from perennial contenders to title challengers.
And the fans? They couldn’t be happier. After all, PIF has fingers in more pies than you might imagine.
Have you ever flown a Boeing airplane? Buy tickets through Live Nation or play Electronic Arts computer games? Using Facebook? They are all partly owned by PIF and yet no one bats an eyelid.
even this week PIF is rumored to have cashed in again, buying Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment for $6.5 billion.
And while the US government might rightly condemn Saudi Arabia for killing Jamal Khashoggi, it did not stop them from striking a deal to sell $3 billion worth of Patriot missiles to Riyadh in August last year either.
There is no point in continuing this stalemate in golf, mainly because nobody talks about golf anymore. No sport is clean, no game beyond reproach. It’s time for Jay and Greg, for golf and golfers — for LIV and the PGA — to get around the table and end this civil war once and for all.
