LIV Golf Is Only the Latest Reminder That In Pro Golf, Money, Power and Control Are King
Money, power and control are pro golf’s driving forces, and that will continue long after young stars like Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa and Rory McIlroy are past their primes.
When Gardner Dickinson in 1968 took the reins to split what was then the PGA Tournament Division out of the PGA of America and into a separate entity, the PGA of America was incensed. The reason was obvious: both sides wanted to hold onto power, control and most importantly, money.
Eventually the players prevailed, and the PGA Tour was born.
That was then. Today the desire for power, control and money helped launch a new rival golf league, the LIV Golf Invitational Series, backed by the Public Investment Fund, which is the Saudi Arabian wealth fund. According to an SI.com/Morning Read report, 19 of the world’s top 100 golfers have signed up to play in its first event in London next month.
According to Human Rights Watch, Saudi Arabia spends billions of dollars hosting major entertainment, cultural, and sporting events as a strategy to deflect from the country’s image as a pervasive human rights violator. Also according to Human Rights Watch, those violations include forcing women to dress conservatively in public, while migrant domestic workers, which are predominantly women, face abuses that include “overwork, forced confinement, non-payment of wages, food deprivation, and psychological, physical, and sexual abuse for which there was little redress.”
Then there is the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which has been placed at the doorstep of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
This is all horrific. I don’t have great regard for Saudi Arabia.
However, two weeks ago the PGA Tour played the Mexico Open at Vidanta in swanky Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a purse of $7.3 million. Three journalists have been murdered this week alone in Mexico, bringing the death toll to 11 for the year. Should more have been made of playing a professional golf tournament in Mexico?
Of course, we don’t have to leave the United States to find injustice.
In January 2021 the PGA of America decided it could not with good conscience hold its 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster and terminated the agreement.
Then-PGA CEO Seth Waugh said in an interview with the Associated Press: "We find ourselves in a political situation not of our making. We're fiduciaries for our members, for the game, for our mission and for our brand. And how do we best protect that? Our feeling was given the tragic events of Wednesday [Jan. 6] that we could no longer hold it at Bedminster. The damage could have been irreparable. The only real course of action was to leave."
So, the PGA of America got out of a deal with Donald Trump, and placed its biggest championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Oklahoma.
But this year the state of Oklahoma wants to subjugate a majority of the population – women – from having a choice with what to do with their bodies.
Governor Ken Stitt recently signed a bill into law that bans abortions after six weeks and said, “I want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country because I represent all four million Oklahomans who overwhelmingly want to protect the unborn.”
The governor’s statement is, at best, highly questionable, as it’s been reported that most Americans don’t favor stricter abortion laws, and in his own state there are conflicting polls for and against the right, but we’re not here to debate whether or not politicians stretch the truth – the question is, should the PGA of America, the USGA, the LPGA and the PGA Tour look at a state’s politics before hosting an event in that state?
Other states that have PGA Tour events, including Mississippi and Texas, site of this week’s Byron Nelson, have taken steps toward similar policies as Oklahoma.
Oklahoma also does not allow for abortions after six weeks in cases of rape or incest. Saudi Arabia has a more reasonable cutoff at 16 weeks and exceptions are reportedly made for rape and incest on a case-by-case basis. Neither system is a great comfort to women, but to think Saudi Arabia on its face has less restrictive abortion laws than Oklahoma is surprising.
I’m not foolish enough to think that golf organizations will make policy decisions based on a state’s restrictive policies, nor do I think they will make decisions based a foreign country’s humanitarian practices.
So, the arguments about human rights, the killing of journalists and abortions rights, while not moot, will be distractions from the driving force behind all of this: power, control and money.
When the Saudi money starts to flow in London next month at the first LIV event, players not in that field will be watching. When they see pros who they believe are of lesser talent banking massive purses, the attraction will be difficult to ignore. Because power, control and money are the heart of pro golf, now and forever.
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