Thomas Jefferson didn’t have the golf industry in mind when he wrote that money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations, but his observation that a man’s management of his purse speaks volumes about his character can easily be applied to the sport’s leaders. Tuesday’s announcement that the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV will form a joint entity offered little actual detail on the future shape of golf, but leaves no ambiguity as to the moral weakness of those guiding it.
The statement announcing peace in our time was flush with the kind of boilerplate banalities that corporate ciphers usually hide behind. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the bag man for MBS, declared himself “proud to partner with the PGA Tour.”
“A momentous day,” cheered Keith Pelley, whose European outfit could charitably be described as non-essential to the new alliance, but was brought along for appearances’ sake.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan forgot his prior reservations about the source of LIV’s financing and praised Al-Rumayyan’s “vision and collaborative and forward-thinking approach.” The deal is “transformational,” he announced, though a cynic might suggest that his new partner’s bonesaw has proven itself pretty transformational too.
While particulars on the new entity are unclear, less ambiguous is the rationale underpinning it. In recent months, golf executives have been repositioning themselves to peel off their share of any settlement. In private, pearls have been clutched over the mounting legal bills and divisive rancor, with exhortations about the need to draw a line under both. There may be folks for whom those positions were sincerely held, but not many. The dispute was always going to be settled according to the only metric that matters to those making the decision: money.
Since its creation, LIV Golf has largely been viewed through four lenses, with some overlap. The most traditional and least significant prisms are whether its competition has integrity and if it is consistent with the values golf imagines itself to uphold. For me, and many others, the key lens is that of morality: should the sport allow itself to be leveraged for reputational repair by autocratic human rights abusers? But for plenty of folks – frankly, most everyone inside the sport – the only perspective that matters is commercial: is LIV good or bad for business? From that myopic viewpoint, if someone is offering them money, how can that not be good for business? No need for a little dismemberment to impede commerce.
For Monahan and Pelley – and for players, agents and assorted hangers on – the problem has always been where the money was going, not where it was coming from. The Saudis were eager to dump billions of dollars into golf, and no matter what disputes arose between the establishment and the upstart, there was a desire to ensure the money be redirected rather than rejected. Morality, like the families of September 11 victims and Jamal Khashoggi, was merely a convenient posture to adopt until the time arrived when space was cleared at the trough.
The exposure faced by Al-Rumayyan and his investment fund in U.S. courts hastened the need for a face-saving settlement, so the time to burrow is at hand. Thus Saudi money stays in the game and both sides position it as an equitable resolution. If this were a genuine victory for LIV’s concept, the announcement would have featured Greg Norman, the league’s chief executive and propagandist. Instead, he was not mentioned. Still, not the first man disappeared after his utility for the Saudis concluded.
The coming months will see make-good maneuverings. A Crown Prince’s ransom must find its way to elite stars who chose not to bolt to LIV last year, while those who did must be recycled into the various tours. While this happens, the only attribute of value will be amnesia, a breezy willingness to forget accusations, insults and litigation. Sportswashing is now standard operating procedure, a shared article of faith for elite golf.
The drift toward this has been slow but inexorable. At the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, I chatted with a prominent golf executive who was enthusiastic about the financial windfall that a settlement could bring to various entities. It was, he insisted, a reasonable solution. Two years earlier, the same man told me, “Golf has to decide whether it wants to be in business with people who cut off heads, and the answer to that should be no.”
No matter how this deal is dressed up, the PGA Tour and golf as a whole will suffer from the toxic Saudi alliance, overlaid with a malignant MAGA component at home. Those who brokered it must know that they will face questions about their choice as each regime abuse and atrocity comes along. But perhaps Monahan and Pelley learned from the examples of their former (and future) players and figure they can brazen it out. America’s trading partner, gas in your car, Uber rides, China … the moronic whataboutism directed their way over the last few years now becomes their shield.
The creation of LIV exposed how many people in golf have a worldview that extends no farther than the perimeter of their purses. But where once it was a collection of individuals reduced to acting as pawns for a murderous regime, now it is an entire sport. Golf will be measurably worse for this deal, forever branded as a willing platform for human rights abusers to launder their wrongdoing.
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