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When sports are repackaged as investment vehicles, a turning point is reached | Jonathan Liew

Saudi Arabia’s takeover of golf is a blueprint for the future – would your favourite sport put up any more of a fight?Perhaps you were invited to the exclusive Venice wedding of a billionaire’s daughter where Jay Monahan and Yasir al-Rumayyan are reported to have met for the first time. Perhaps you happened to be playing a round at Beaverbrook Golf Course at the same time as Rumayyan and the PGA board member Jimmy Dunne were thrashing out the early stages of a deal that would change golf for ever. Perhaps you happened to be eavesdropping at the next table as they ate dinner or at least close enough to hurl a well-aimed bread roll or slip something into the...

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Saudi Arabia’s deal with PGA is major step in relentless sportswashing saga | Sean Ingle

Regime is using sport as a tool for soft power but has failed to wash away sickening track record on human rightsLooking back, so much of it was already there on that night in Diriyah when a storm raged across the desert and Anthony Joshua made history – and £60m – by retaining his world heavyweight title belts. Not just the good, the bad and the ugly of Saudi Arabia’s sporting ambitions, but the half-truths and accommodations of those willing to take the money and look the other way.One moment from the fight in December 2019 lingers more than most: Joshua absorbing the cheers from the young crowd, many of whom were women in western clothes, before averting his gaze...

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What does golf’s blockbuster ‘merger’ mean for the game and its players? | Ewan Murray

Disrupter Greg Norman is not the only one attached to LIV who will surely soon discover services are no longer requiredThe playing of a Presidents Cup, for so long the Ryder Cup’s poor relation, in Saudi Arabia now has to be on the table. The deal struck between LIV Golf and one-time rivals, the PGA and DP World Tours, is all about bang for buck.The Saudis will believe they have saved face by joining forces with golf’s establishment – there will be no more potentially embarrassing litigation – but their desperate bid to earn legitimacy via sport also means this deal has to work two ways. Continue reading...

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Australians in golf’s new world order: Cameron Smith wins but Greg Norman loses | Nick Tedeschi

Tour merger gives Smith everything he could possibly want while the LIV commissioner’s time as a powerbroker is surely overAs the golf world continues to reel from the news that the Saudi-backed LIV Golf will merge with the PGA Tour and the DP World tour, Australia’s Cameron Smith now has everything he could possibly desire: the money, more money to play for and his tournament of choice to play in.With Yasir al-Rumuyyan at the helm of a new world golf entity, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) take-over will have an immense impact on Australian golf and its most well known figures. Continue reading...

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Phil Mickelson upstages the Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy show at the Masters | Andy Bull

LIV rebel rolled back the years with a final round flourish but futures of the two biggest names in golf are up in the airMasters week in April is always a long one in Augusta. The Monday before the major, all the talk around the course was about Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who were out playing a practice round together. Whether it really was or not, their pairing felt like a pointed rejoinder to the LIV golfers who were still arriving at the course. Woods and McIlroy aren’t just the two biggest names in the game, but the two most outspoken critics of the breakaway tour. And here they were, taking ownership of the biggest stage.Augusta National is a...

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