Maybe, with the Masters tournament deciding not to ban players from the rebel LIV tour, old school world golf deserves to lose control of the game to the ugly millions of the Saudi sportswashers.
The Masters, US Open, British Open and PGA majors are all run by different organisationsfrom the PGA — whose guardianship of the rest of the tour has been clear and determined and who can be exempted from the following criticism.
The majors have not yet backed the PGA’s stance by banning golfers who took the money from the Saudis. That means majors winners like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, Bryson de Chambeau, Sergio Garcia, Brooks Koepka, Bubba Watson, Charl Schwartzel and Louis Oosthuizen will all be at Augusta National golf club in April, along with stars like Joaquin Niemann, Abraham Ancer, Talor Gooch, Harold Varner III, Jason Kokrak and Kevin Na.
Someone once said that self-interest makes some people blind and others sharp-sighted. The Masters’ weasel words in explaining the lack of a ban make it clear that they are in the optically-challenged zone, in more ways than one.
Their statement said: “Regrettably, recent actions have divided men’s professional golf by diminishing the virtues of the game and the meaningful legacies of those who built it. Although we are disappointed in these developments, our focus is to honour the tradition of bringing together a pre-eminent field of golfers this coming April.”
Translation: Broadcasters, sponsors and some fans want to see all the best golfers in the world play in one of the best tournaments in the world. In other words, there’s money to think about and, as they said, tradition as well — though they are only concerned about theirs, not anyone else’s.
Ban the Livvies and the Masters might not be the “pre-eminent” tournament in the world any more. We shouldn’t be surprised. This is the Masters; Augusta National only permitted black members in 1990 (there are now apparently a whole nine of them…phew, integration, anybody?) and women members in 2012 (after demonstrations and fierce pressure). If you’re wondering about the use of the word “apparently”, it’s because the club won’t say how many women and African Americans are among their 300-odd elite members.
LIV golfer Dustin Johnson at the Masters in 2020. Photo / Getty
Why is all this important? Well, there’s a fair argument to say it isn’t — obscenely rich sports guys arguing among themselves and battling for control. It’s like TV’s Succession drama, but with pitching wedges.
The LIV tour is basically meaningless. No one watches it; few care about the results. The threat comes from the Saudi dollars, laundering the image of Saudi Arabia, a country with a highly dubious human rights record too long to go into here.
Pay enough for long enough, win over the main players and, the strategy prescribes, new traditions will begin. However, the banned players’ deep desire to play in the majors reveals the hidden truth: credibility can really only be found in the four majors and their natural pathway, the PGA Tour.
The majors date back 80-160 years (the Masters the youngest) and to win all four in a season — or even all four in a career — is still among sport’s Holy Grails. The LIV golfers want the money but they also savour the tradition and the credibility. It’s called having your cake and eating it too — or maybe having the cash but refusing to think about what made you so valuable.
LIV’s biggest coup to date is Cam Smith — the mulleted Aussie who seemed destined for greatness before leaping to LIV. The price of greatness? About $160m in Smith’s case (even before he stuck a tee in the ground), though at least he admitted it was about the money, as opposed to some of the lame explanations offered by others.
Smith, who had already earned more than US$10m in the PGA season when he changed horses, is the biggest LIV threat at Augusta (four top 10s in six tries), along with former winners Johnson and Reed who both have good records there.
The only option available to the PGA is to keep lobbying the majors’ organisations to drop the rebels and to bring forward young golfers like Tom Kim, Cameron Young, Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland and others. Helping build them into major champions (Scheffler already is) will, in time, see LIV golfers supplanted — by the power of being The Next Big Things.
The clash of LIV and Tour golfers in April will be eagerly anticipated by those who see it as entertainment. Professional sport is largely about self-interest but, even though Tour players have access to eye-watering amounts of prize money, this will be an intriguing shootout between those seen as trousering tainted cash and those on the side of legacy and tradition.
So maybe LIV Golf has given the game a shot in the arm, for now anyway. Time is probably golf’s best weapon against the interlopers but you’d hope the LIV adrenaline injection doesn’t make the majors tournaments go completely blind nor obscure the sharp-sighted vision of more PGA players.
