PGA teams up with nemesis LIV Golf: Money wins again

It’s a pithy phrase from tycoon Logan Roy on the hit ‘Succession’ series and it’s never been more apt for the sports business, as today the PGA Tour announced a merger with rival LIV. funded by Saudi Arabia which he condemned as an existential threat. for golf: “The money won.

The PGA Tour spent the better part of a year trying to convince the world that it had some sort of higher status, demanding loyalty from its players and arguing that joining LIV amounted to ‘sports image laundering’ for the grim record of human rights. in your sponsoring country.

He couldn’t offer the eight- and nine-figure guarantees that LIV was paying, so he played on a golf conscience, whatever that was supposed to be.

Now it’s over. The PGA Tour and the LIV will live under one banner, chaired by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

PGA Tour boss Jay Monahan, who led the charge against LIV, calling it “a foreign monarchy spending billions of dollars trying to buy the game,” will serve as chief executive of the new entity. Europe-based DP Tour is also part of the deal.

The short version: After shaming players for taking the money, the PGA Tour is… taking the money.

In the meantime, audiences will be asked to forget that last year ever happened. The golf conscience has strayed off the main road and is doing donuts in the club parking lot. You’re going to hear the word “hypocrisy” so much in the next few weeks that you’ll want to banish it like a belly putter.

Are PGA Tour executives a bunch of hypocrites for making us believe their battle was a just cause, going so far as to kick LIV defectors out of PGA Tour events, only to then turn around and cut a deal ?

The PGA Tour was happy to be portrayed as being in some kind of principled battle against a golfing Darth Vader. Was it Dark versus Dark from the start? Was it foolish to indulge in any kind of moralism in a sport with such a sad history of exclusion?

Or was the righteousness of the PGA Tour nothing more than a strategy, a ruse to swell its chest and become formidable for a competitor with the financial power to grind it to dust?

Better yet, was the hypocrisy there from the start? The idea that a company like the PGA Tour could draw some sort of moral line on where the money comes from?

LIV was not the first company to seek Saudi investment: many companies doing business there have long been affiliated with golf, including professional golf itself.

More boring practical considerations certainly played a role. The PGA Tour and LIV were in the midst of antitrust litigation and this settlement eliminates a long and costly legal battle.

It’s hard not to see this as an emotional win for LIV, and especially for its much-maligned founding father Greg Norman, who doesn’t appear to be part of the new setup. LIV has built a noisy product – no field tournaments, no fireworks, no teams (Fireballs! Crushers!) – and in the space of barely a year has used its financial strength to force the PGA Tour to review its competitive schedule and pay scale. Now he boards the yacht as an equal.

And what about those LIV golfers who took that money and can now return home, and presumably to the world rankings, with still-fattened bank accounts? The mind races in locker room conversations, Phil Mickelson’s text messages to fellow LIV dropouts. Who feels smart now?

What about the CW, LIV’s television partner? They have to do somersaults in the control room. Crusher visors for everyone!

On the other hand, there will be anger from those who came forward during the LIV saga to remind the public of Saudi Arabia’s alleged human rights abuses, as well as its role involved. in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. They certainly feel used.

And Rory McIlroy? The PGA Tour was happy to have its telegenic star as a spokesperson for its supposed virtue, empathetic with the sport’s dusty traditions and questioning the motives of teammates who fled for all that LIV dough.

What about any other golfer courted by LIV who bought into the PGA Tour’s protest on loyalty and tradition, and chose to avoid the money and stay? How is it possible that they continue to take the organ seriously?

Cynicism, of course, is the default position for many aspects of professional sports. This one crumbles like a double pile of cynicism upon cynicism, an invigorating jolt of reality for anyone who thought this dispute was about something higher than the bottom line.

In the days to come, we will experience more winners, losers and raw feelings. It’s an old lesson repeated over and over again in sport and business, but still worth the occasional reminder.

Money won, because it almost always does.