On its first anniversary last week, LIV Golf returned to the Centurion Club near St Albans, the club which hosted the circuit’s inaugural event last summer, won by Charl Schwartzel. This year’s version was won by Cameron Smith, ahead of him defending his Open title at Hoylake next week. It wasn’t all good news for the Aussie, though. He missed a par putt from six feet on the final green which handed the team victory to the 4Aces (Dustin Johnson, Pat Perez, Patrick Reed and Peter Uihlein) and denied his Rippers team (other members: Matt Jones, Marc Leishman and Jediah Morgan) the chance of competing in LIV’s first team golf playoff. I guess it’s kind of appropriate that a golf tournament taking place effectively in the home town of the man who created the Ryder Cup should have a big focus on team play, and that was certainly the case here. “We showed that we’re a contender for the team stuff,” said Smith. “That’s where we want to be every week.”
Where no one surely wants to be every week is where PGA Tour officials were earlier this week: in front of a US Senate committee. In sum, the PGA Tour (and the DP World Tour) and LIV Golf are in “a mutual agreement to continue to negotiate” how a deal between the parties might work in the future. Among the subjects apparently floated have been Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods each ‘owning’ one of the said teams; the removal of Greg Norman from having any ongoing involvement (to quote: “Norman would be terminated upon execution of the final agreement”, which in all the circumstances sounds decidedly sinister); and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the main man in LIV Golf and eventually chairman of the new entity, becoming a member of the R&A and Augusta National (this even though the Open and the Masters are not operated by the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour). The money involved is reportedly “north of $1 billion”.
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Jimmy Dunne, a PGA Tour board member involved in the discussions, said: “My fear is if we don’t get to an agreement [the Saudis] will end up owning golf.” The committee chairman, Richard Blumenthal, said this “is about how a brutal, regressive regime can buy influence – indeed even take over – a cherished American institution simply to cleanse its public image”. The American golf commentator Brandel Chamblee tweeted: “LIV golf is the evolution of evil, whereby the commodification of seemingly everything makes it not only possible but acceptable to commit crimes against humanity and pay for forgiveness. The more I understand of this deal, the more sickening it becomes.” Well, you can’t accuse him of fence-sitting.
And yet amid all this big-time golf talk (OK, make that huge-time), last week also saw the following announcement: “New York and London (July 6, 2023) – LIV Golf today announced that live Friday tournament coverage and non-live past tournament coverage will air non-exclusively in US airports through an agreement with ReachTV, the largest streaming television network serving travel audiences in North America.” I have to say I was a little underwhelmed; hardly the same as Sky poaching the Open and the Ryder Cup off the BBC, is it?
You can follow Robert Green on Twitter @robrtgreen and enjoy his other blog f-factors.com plus you can read more by him on golf at robertgreengolf.com
