“There are four types of men in the world: lovers, opportunists, lookers-on and imbeciles,” wrote the 19th-century French philosopher Hippolyte Taine. “The happiest are the imbeciles.” All are well represented in the chaos prevailing in men’s professional golf.
The imbeciles — usually more irate than happy — can be found in the drool-speckled ranks of LIV Golf’s social media trolls, but not exclusively. How else to explain a decision to hold the most recent meeting between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund in New York City on September 11? PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan wasn’t present, and so didn’t face the fraught question of whether to attend the 9/11 memorial ceremony that his government contributed so much to bringing about.
What of the lovers, opportunists and lookers-on?
The latter is the largest group, the PGA Tour’s journeymen, veterans and staff who aren’t deemed important enough to be updated on matters that will greatly impact their working lives. (There’s arguably a subcategory of lookers-away, former fans who are disengaging from golf, due at least in part to the division and diluted product.) Opportunists, meanwhile, are laboring to exhaustion.
Strategic Sports Group has been opportunistic — not in the pejorative sense — by investing $1.5 billion in a sport that is under-leveraged. The Saudis too, by identifying what makes golf penetrable for sportswashing: players who don’t have contracts but do have a delusional notion of their market worth. The DP World Tour can also be included. It benefitted from a lucrative alliance when the PGA Tour needed to scope the rising Saudi tide, and now does little to quash speculation that it might be an alternative for the PIF if a deal isn’t reached with the Americans. And of course, Greg Norman, who finally roped a dope willing to finance his grievances, and whose insistence that LIV is thriving has as much credibility as tales of canine suppers in Springfield, Ohio.
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But none have been more opportunistic than PGA Tour golfers. They’ve secured previously unimaginable pay for working in an underperforming product, grabbed control in a governance shakeup amid the aftershocks of the Framework Agreement, and are playing power games by creating their own marketing events, safe in the knowledge that the Tour lacks the leverage over members that it enjoyed during the imperial commissariat of Tim Finchem.
The game is ripe with the stench of every man for himself.
So what of the lovers? That’s you, golf fans. And right now, the thing you love is making it awfully tough to maintain your affection, even for those who aren’t overly troubled by the prospect of Saudi investment being mainstreamed. How long before a new normal is established and the political and economic narratives diminish in this sport?
Talk to enough people familiar with the state of negotiations between the PGA Tour and the PIF and it’s clear progress is happening, but uncertainty remains. Not least the timeframe governing a Department of Justice review of any agreement. Assuming that the presidential election doesn’t lead to a stubby Cheeto thumb being placed on the scale, that process could take more than a year. In hopes of hastening it, the Tour has constantly updated Justice officials on what they’re considering and addressed any concerns raised. But it’s unclear if the parties could seek some manner of preliminary green light from the DOJ in advance of an announcement, nor even how detailed deal terms must be to pass muster. Two things can be assured: players will not go backward on what they’re earning and LIV will be repackaged rather than retired, since regulators would likely see the alternatives as anticompetitive.
Despite Rory McIlroy’s public suggestion that the onus is on PGA Tour officials to get moving, it’s the PIF that will most impact whether a deal is realized. A Justice Department review will almost certainly involve requests for discovery materials similar to those the Saudis refused to submit during antitrust litigation, and which they’ve declined to hand over to a U.S. Senate committee for a year. Sources close to the negotiations say there’s clear intent by the PIF to avoid establishing a transparency precedent that might shine a light on its other investments in the U.S., known and stealth. So what level of compliance will prove sufficient for the U.S. government? It won’t get 100 percent, but how far shy of that will it settle for?
Which is to say that even if deal terms emerge in the coming weeks — not implausible, based on people I’ve talked to — a long and bumpy road lies ahead. Which promises to leave lovers waiting, imbeciles slabbering and lookers-on idling, all while giving opportunists more time to better angle themselves to the trough.