Sports - a General Thread

[RTH10260]

PGA’s ‘merger’ with LIV can’t be seen as anything other than a Saudi victory
Forget the talk of released tension: this deal is merely a depressing illustration that money can disrupt and distort everything in sport

Ewan Murray
Tue 6 Jun 2023 20.25 BST

The cliches have already been trotted out – a great moment for golf, a long-awaited delivery of a united front. Some would have you believe the shock announcement of peace in our time is cause for epic celebration. That the war is over, the adults in the room have won.

The reality is of course entirely different. No level of spin can alter that. The willingness of the PGA Tour, especially, and DP World Tour to forsake entrenched opposition to LIV Golf contradicts so much that has been said and done over the past two years. This serves as the latest, depressing illustration that bottomless pits of money can disrupt and distort everything in sport. And not just any bottomless pit; one emanating from a kingdom guilty of human rights abuses and which is using golf – plus football, plus anything else it can lay its hands on – as a tool to make people look the other way. Sportswashing works, kids. This chapter is to the tune of several billion dollars; chump change to the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF).

When Phil Mickelson, for so long the arch-nemesis of the PGA Tour, is revelling in an agreement then it is difficult to portray it in any other terms than a victory for LIV. Under the mainstream golf umbrella, it will be legitimised. World ranking points are sure to follow, as is broader television exposure. Donald Trump joined Mickelson in voicing his delight: that should raise a red flag for everyone involved.

It is impossible to overstate how deep-rooted earlier positions were. The PGA Tour and LIV coming together in perfect harmony is akin to Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy meeting for cocktails. Friendships have been torched, not only among golfers – see Rory McIlroy and Sergio García – but backroom staff who found themselves caught in fierce crossfire. “Today, that tension goes away,” said Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour’s commissioner. If only life were so simple.

In a sport which was money-oriented even before the Saudis arrived, there is a case to be made for all sides needing this deal. Continuing litigation between LIV and the PGA Tour risked huge embarrassment to the PIF. There should be red faces, too, at the exorbitant sums fired towards over-the-hill or run-of-the-mill golfers by the PIF as it looked to establish LIV as a credible force.

For its part, the PGA Tour – which presents itself as the utopia of the professional game – is currently operating minus at least a handful of players who would enhance its product. It may also be the case that the playing out of antitrust lawsuits, which have now been curtailed, would have caused it reputational problems.

The DP World Tour earns itself a slight pass on the basis that it had a previous arrangement with Saudi Arabia via a tournament staged there from 2019, and that its chief executive, Keith Pelley, has called routinely for LIV to operate from within the golf ecosystem. Nonetheless, the overall outcome cannot be ignored; the Saudis offered to commit huge funding to a new model, with the PGA and DP World Tours deciding they would rather have slices of this cake than continue to try to hold their own.




https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... di-victory

[pipistrelle]

What happened to "America First"?

[John Thomas8]

What happened to "America First"?

Saudi billions of dollars ate that for breakfast.

[John Thomas8]

What happens when sportballer youtoobers actually get on a field: