Family needs and the supposed inequities of the PGA's previously hegemonic universe were the explanations a number of golfers used to justify biting the hand that had fed them for so long. Meanwhile, Tiger Woods, the greatest recipient of PGA largesse and probably the greatest golfer of our time, if not any time, reportedly turned down an almost billion-dollar offer with sharp words for those who had gone for the quick cash.
The PGA obviously agreed and barred any golfer who took up the Saudi offers from its tournaments. In response, some of them promptly sued the PGA.
The Kingdom of Golf
On the face of it, creating a Kingdom of Golf might not seem like a crucial thing for a morally challenged monarchy to do. After all, golf isn't exactly a charity or a social justice campaign that's likely to signal your virtue. It's just a game whose players use sticks to swat little balls into holes in the ground while strolling around. It's not even good exercise and far less so if you're driving the course in a motorized cart or hire a caddie to carry your sticks. And it gets worse. After all, the irrigation water and poisonous chemicals necessary to keep the playing fields luxuriantly green at all times are abetting ecological disaster.
Golf symbolized reactionary greed even before the Saudis entered the picture. For starters, its competitors are among the only professional athletes ranked purely by the cash prizes they've won. And the leading golfers invariably earn far more from endorsements and speaking engagements. The sport's almost comic upper-class snootiness sometimes seems like an orchestrated distraction from the profound racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism lodged in its history and, even today, the discrimination against women that still exists at so many of the leading country clubs that sustain the game.
Golf has long been retrograde, exclusionary, and money-obsessed. To put that in perspective, the estimated revenue of the Professional Golf Association in 2019 was $1.5 billion " and it boasts a non-profit status that's sometimes been questioned. Lucrative as it is, it also proved distinctly vulnerable to an attack by an oil-soaked autocracy that, in warming up to invade golf, had alread y invested in Formula One racing, e-sports, wrestling, and its most recentcontroversial purchase, a British Premier League soccer team (which provoked protests from fans and Amnesty International).
Still, the Saudis' move on golf was even bolder, more ambitious, and somehow almost ordained to happen.
Unlike football and baseball, which are convenient amalgams of socialism for the owners (in their collusive cooperation) and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the players and other personnel, golf is more of a monarchy along the lines of, um, Saudi Arabia. Until the LIV Tour came along, the main PGA tour, that sport's equivalent of the major leagues, had been all-powerful in its control over both golfers and venues.
Over the years, golfers have indeed complained about that, but except for Greg Norman, a 67-year-old Australian former champion, not too loudly. Now a highly successful clothing and golf-course-design entrepreneur, Norman is called the Great White Shark for his looks and aggressive style. No wonder he's now the CEO of LIV Golf and the ringleader of the campaign to recruit the top pros to play in the breakaway tour.
Norman denies that he answers to the crown prince, but his attempts to distance himself from that ruthless Saudi ruler are not taken seriously by most observers of golf, including the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins, who wrote:
"Let's be frank. LIV Golf is nothing more than a vanity project for Norman and his insatiable materialism " and an exhibition-money scam for early-retiree divas who are terrified of having to fly commercial again someday. By the way, the supposed hundreds of millions in guaranteed contracts for a handful of stars " has anyone seen the actual written terms, the details of what Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson will have to do to collect that blood-spattered coin, or is everyone just taking the word of Norman and a few agents trying to whip up commissions that it's all free ice cream?"
One of the best sports columnists, Jenkins may seem excessive in her attack on Norman, but the passions that golf and Saudi Arabia have raised separately only increase in tandem. On the one hand, there's the outrage when it comes to Saudi Arabia's murderous human-rights abuses and Washington's continuing complicity with the regime, thanks in particular to its ongoing massive arms sales to that country. (The latest of those deals, largely Patriot missiles sold to that country for $3 billion, feels distinctly like a kind of bribery.)
On the other hand, there's the long-standing resentment of golf as a symbol of rich, white, male supremacy. In fact, it's still seen as a private meeting place to create and maintain relationships that will lead to significant political and business decisions, the sports equivalent of, um, Saudi missile deals.
The pro golfers profiting from the current bonanza may not engender much sympathy, but the derision for their materialism should, at least, be put in context. Until the LIV came along, they had next to no options in their sport and few of them made Mickelson- or Johnson-style money. Worse yet, their lonely gunslinger lifestyles made unionization at best the remotest of possibilities, especially for figures deeply wired into the corporate community through their sponsorship deals.
The Saudi golf coup (because that's indeed what it is) has taken place at an interesting juncture for the sport and its two most compelling figures, Trump and Tiger, who have indeed played together, both seeming to enjoy the trash talk that went with the experience.
Tiger in Twilight
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