How Much Would It Take For You To Shed Your Principles? Your Honor? Your Self-Respect?
A few billion here...a few billion there...pretty soon people will do just about anything, morality be damned
When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.
Shirley Chisholm
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.
Mahatma Gandhi
PGA Tour agrees to merge with Saudi-backed rival LIV Golf
PGA Tour, LIV Golf, DP World Tour unify 'under one umbrella'
How much money would it take for you to compromise your principles? To walk back everything you’ve claimed to hold dear? To betray those whom you stood up for just a scant year ago?
If you’re PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Monaghan, we’re about to find out. The PGA Tour announced (with no advance warning) yesterday morning that it’s merging with its sworn enemy, LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed golf league that’s been throwing money at star golfers as if it grows on trees.
I used to love to play golf…that is, until my back would no longer allow me to. Now I’m a very casual fan, and while I’ll watch the major tournaments and admire the skill and talent of the players on the PGA Tour, it’s become increasingly challenging over the years. For me, there’s a fundamental disconnect. How do I find a way to relate to players, some of whom can make more in a weekend than I’ll make during my lifetime?
I understand and can appreciate the argument that the highest levels of golf, whether the PGA or the upstart LIV Tour, are a meritocracy. Nothing is guaranteed (except for the money paid to PGA stars by the LIV Tour to make the jump to their tour). Players aren’t guaranteed a salary, and their earnings are based on performance. Those who don’t do well may find themselves playing on the North Korean or Iranian Tours (JK) if they can’t hold up under pressure.
Of course, top performers also rake in endorsement money from businesses that want to be associated with success. And some players make more from endorsements than on the golf course, but most players on the PGA Tour scramble to make ends meet.
That said, the amount of money that flows into- and out of- the PGA and LIV Tours is mind-boggling, and the competition between the two tours has ratcheted up that flow.
With the merger, the amount of money available to the players and the PGA Tour, LIV Golf, and the DP World Tour, will increase by leaps and bounds. And that’s what this is really all about when you break everything down- money.
Never mind the bloody legacy of the Saudi government. I wonder how much money it took for for Jay Monaghan’s principled objections to disappear?
The hypocrisy behind the merger is stunning. I’m not sure I have the words to adequately describe how astonishingly hypocritical this merger is. This is especially true when you consider the number of players who stayed with the PGA Tour when LIV Golf was tossing millions at players. Players like Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson were offered hundreds of millions of dollars to defect.
And yet some players chose to stand on principle and turned down LIV Golf’s money. How dumb does that look now?
Yeah, who looks like a sucker now, eh?
This video of an interview with Monaghan at the 2022 RBC Canadian Open sounds astonishingly hypocritical in light of yesterday’s news. Monaghan moralizes about protecting the PGA Tour and casting out those guilty of grasping after filthy lucre…and yet that’s exactly what the merger represents.
One of the arguments against LIV Golf has come from the families of 9/11 victims. Since almost all of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, the families argue that the Saudi Public Investment Fund is engaging in “sportswashing”- using LIV Golf to rehabilitate their bloody reputation.
And they’re spot on. Now the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and LIV Golf, will be collaborating with the Saudi Public Investment Fund in their sportswashing.
Money always wins. It’s merely a matter of how much. A billion here, a billion there…and pretty soon everyone’s principled objections seem to magically disappear.
And I haven’t even addressed the murder of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi and the brutal Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen.
LIV Golf’s first American tournament was here in Portland in late Spring 2022. Families of 9/11 victims protested outside the entrance to Pumpkin Ridge Country Club. Players, fans, and officials had to drive by them to get onto the club grounds; no one could say they didn’t see them. I’d initially planned to go to the tournament but decided not to out of respect for the families of the 9/11 victims. I lost a friend in the North Tower on 9/11, so I had no intention of disrespecting the families.
If you start at the 4:00 mark of the video, CBS’ Jim Nantz asks Monaghan about the 9/11 families. Monaghan’s very clear that he feels for them, saying that he knows two families who lost loved ones that day.
So what’s changed in the past year? What happened to make Jay Monaghan determine that his respect for the 9/11 families was no longer the concern it was last year at this time? What could’ve made Monaghan forget all the high-minded words he spewed about protecting the game of golf and those who play it at the highest level?
And why did the news strike like a bolt out of the blue? Could it have been that Monaghan knew that if news of the merger had leaked ahead of time, players, fans, and the media would’ve gone nuclear? Was it vital to present the agreement as a fait accompli so that it would withstand whatever righteous indignation would surely follow the announcement?
Remember, it was only 11 months ago that Monaghan unloaded both barrels on LIV Golf as an “irrational threat”:
Perhaps the most irrational part of the merger negotiations is that those who will be most impacted- the players- knew nothing about it- until everyone else in the world learned about it.
One might’ve thought that Jay Monaghan, as the Commissioner of the PGA Tour, might’ve had the respect for the players to give them a heads-up. Or to have the courtesy to make them aware of what was coming.
Nope, not even that. Yeah, it was a dick move, but if there’s one thing we should know about Jay Monaghan by now, dick moves are de riguer. You can do that when you have no honor.
[I]t was clear that PGA Tour players had no idea that a deal was in the offing while LIV players were delighted at the end of the conflict.
"The hell is going on? Very curious how many people knew this deal was happening. About 5-7 people? Player run organization right?," said American player Michael Kim.
Canadian player Mackenzie Hughes was quick to note the sharp about-turn from PGA Tour officials who had been vehemently opposed to the Saudi-backed tour.
"Nothing like finding out through Twitter that we're merging with a tour that we said we'd never do that with," he wrote.
South Korea's An Byeong-hun noted the difficult situation for players who had backed the PGA Tour's stance against LIV.
"I'm guessing the LIV teams were struggling to get sponsors and PGA tour couldn't turn down the money. Win-win for both tours but it's a big lose for who defended the tour for last two years".
US player Dylan Wu echoed An's comments, blasting the "hypocrisy" of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.
"Tell me why Jay Monahan basically got a promotion to CEO of all golf in the world by going back on everything he said the past 2 years," Wu wrote. "The hypocrisy. Wish golf worked like that. I guess money always wins."
Dylan Wu’s question is one that was top mind for players who met with Monaghan yesterday- including the ones who called him a hypocrite. How much did it take for Monaghan to be OK with his hypocrisy? How much did it cost for him to shed his principles? His honor? His self-respect? And will he like what he sees when he looks at himself in the mirror tomorrow morning?
How does he feel knowing that he also has blood on his hands?
Tournament golf may be a meritocracy, but it turns out that being the PGA Tour Commissioner doesn’t work the same way. Jay Monaghan just negotiated a battlefield promotion for himself to Emperor God-King and Lord of All He Surveys of the World of Golf.
Money always wins. The question is how much it takes for filthy lucre to emerge victorious over principles, honor, and self-respect. Never mind how many millions someone like Monaghan requires before he stops caring about the degree of disrepute others may hold him in.
And how much money did it take to convince Monaghan to drop the principles he so haughtily established during his interview with Jim Nantz at the RBC Canadian Open in June 2022?
The details are as yet unknown, but the Saudi Public Investment Fund will be the sole investor in the new entity. Everyone will now be tainted.
Way to go, Commissioner; you just tarred everyone with the same bloody brush. I wonder how those two families you mentioned who lost loved ones on 9/11 feel about you now?
From where I sit, I think Jay Monaghan should be ashamed of himself, and the PGA’s player should be demanding his immediate resignation, if not his head on a Waterford crystal platter. Of course, Monaghan probably received enough Saudi blood money to paper over any shame he might’ve been inclined to feel…and enough to render his give-a-fuck hors de combat.
Golf- a game played by gentlemen and corrupted by corporate greedheads. That’s always been true, of course…except that instead of thousands and millions, we’re not talking about BILLIONS. Because, repeat after me…
MONEY ALWAYS WINS.
