The landscape of men’s professional golf has changed with the arrival of the LIV Golf series, a start-up tour backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – among the most lucrative sovereign wealth funds in the world, with an estimated value of ¤570 billion. Greg Norman, the Australian golfer who was a two-time major champion, is the chief executive of the new organisation, which has successfully lured many established players away from the traditional main tours, the PGA Tour in the United States and the DP World Tour (formerly known as the European Tour).
Norman has long said that an alternative global tour should be available to professional players who are independent contractors and, with the Saudi money, has found the necessary financial backing with seemingly a bottomless pit of cash.
The Saudi government has invested in other sports, ranging from boxing to football to Formula 1, which helps to distract attention from its human rights violations. Men’s professional golf has become the latest to be used as a sportswashing tool and in a way that has unceremoniously shifted the sport’s traditional power base.
Among the big names to defect to the new start-up tour are major champions Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and Graeme McDowell. Their defections have resulted in suspensions being issued by the PGA Tour and a mix of bans and fines by the DP World Tour but it remains to be seen what difference if any such sanctions will make. Rory McIlroy, who has emerged as a powerful and articulate voice in defending the traditional tours, called the actions of those players who followed the money trail “duplicitous”, in saying one thing and doing the other.
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Certainly, the amount of money being mentioned as signing-on fees from LIV Golf to players – up to ¤200 million in some cases – is obscene by any measure. Golf has always been seen as a selfish sport. The defections of so many high-profile players would now also cast it as a greedy one, at odds with the very principle of equity at its core.