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...
Henrik Stenson has not won since 2017 and like García, Poulter, Mickelson and Westwood is being paid on name not formSportswashing is not supposed to make commercial sense. Therein lies the reason that no normally functioning business saw fit to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a disruption plan for golf. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) can attempt to rebrand a kingdom for which the murder of a journalist and human rights atrocities are typical reference points with the benefit of an apparently bottomless pit of cash. If the PGA and DP World Tours find themselves embroiled in a commercial long game with the Saudi-backed LIV Series, they know they will be outmuscled.Events of recent days did, however,...
The Saudi-backed series began with an inaugural event that was quickly overshadowed by the PGA Tour’s reactionBalls in the air, missives in the post. Thirty minutes of the inaugural LIV Golf event had been played when a bulletin from Ponte Vedra overshadowed anything that was about to happen at the Centurion Club. Greg Norman stands with the banned of the PGA Tour.The Australian had been all smiles on the 1st tee as Dustin Johnson, Scott Vincent and Phil Mickelson appeared as the marquee group. Speaking before making his way on to the course, Norman admitted his desire to take on golf’s ecosystem had been something of a crusade. His action was guaranteed to prompt a PGA Tour reaction. It duly...
Rebel tour derided by Rory McIlroy starts in Hertfordshire with Dustin Johnson the biggest name confirmedDespite being as obvious an attempt at sportswashing as one is ever likely to see, it is difficult to determine what, if anything, the much-publicised LIV Golf Series is likely to do to serve its intended purpose of presenting a more benign, warm and fuzzy image of its backers in Saudi Arabia.Still in its embryonic stages, with the first ball not scheduled to be struck until later this week in Hertfordshire, things started badly for the Saudi rebel tour and seem to have gone downhill quicker than a bathtub full of pensioners in an episode of Last of the Summer Wine. Continue reading...
There is very little competitive validity in the LIV Golf Series, with golfers willing pawns in the sportswashing exerciseThere is a key problem with the distribution of a $4m (£3.2m) first prize in a tournament that features a shotgun start. There will be no way of knowing if the winning putt at the Centurion Club on Saturday is to be holed on the 1st, 7th, 13th or any other green. Perhaps the conventional stroke-play format as used on mainstream tours is boring to some but at least people know where to be for the denouement.If this were the only potentially messy element of the LIV Golf Series, which makes its debut in Hertfordshire on Thursday, Greg Norman would have no...