PGA Tour shows blood is thicker than integrity after merger with LIV Golf

In the spirit of their shocking announcement Tuesday of a merger with the rebel LIV Golf, the PGA Tour should create a new event, The Hypocrite Open, that celebrates one of the most blatant capitulations in the history of sports.

Upon further review, you can take out “one of” — if not the qualifier, “of sports.”

This isn’t a case of strange bedfellows; more like sleeping with the enemy. Or, more to the point, selling out one’s morals in pursuit of what the PGA Tour once quaintly regarded as Saudi blood money.

Turns out, blood is thicker than integrity.

What makes this hypocritical, of course, is that the PGA Tour spent the past year demonizing the pros who accepted massive payments to join the upstart tour, essentially branding them as soulless traitors. And now they have basically sold the PGA Tour to the Saudis, who bankrolled LIV with limitless billions.

The PGA Tour once seemed to regard the human-rights violations of the Saudis as a bridge too far. Commissioner Jay Monahan said last year, “I would ask any player that has left, or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

The players who stayed loyal to the PGA Tour might have a different answer today.

A tweet Tuesday from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), summed it all up: “PGA officials were in my office just months ago talking about how the Saudis’ human rights record should disqualify them from having a stake in a major American sport. I guess maybe their concerns weren’t really about human rights?”

So why did the PGA Tour change direction now, in light of the fact that LIV seemed to be becoming increasingly irrelevant and many of its players were looking for ways to come back to the PGA Tour?

That’s the billion-dollar question, but don’t underestimate the daunting prospect of the ongoing legal battles the PGA Tour was facing. Each side had sued the other. The Saudis’ $620 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) allowed it to fight indefinitely; the PGA Tour didn’t have that luxury.

Who is the big winner in all of this? Obviously, at the top of the list are the Saudis, who are successfully carrying out their strategy of a global infiltration of the sports world. After major inroads in soccer, Formula One, eSports and gaming, this is their biggest conquest yet.

Of course, another way to look at this is that the Saudis have executed the ultimate in “sportswashing.” It’s the common term regarding Saudi attempts to distract from their human-rights violations. That includes the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The CIA concluded that the murder was approved by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But the PGA Tour has become complicit in those sportswashing attempts.

More winners: players such as Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, who took massive sums of money (more than $100 million in most cases, and $200 million in Phil’s) to join LIV and then faced the scorn and derision of their former tour mates — in addition to getting banned from the PGA Tour.

It will now be much harder for the current PGA Tour players to retain the moral high ground. This new agreement also seems to forge a path back to the PGA Tour for the LIV-ers, though there are hints that there might be some financial penalties attached. Regardless, the players who opted for a money grab will come out golden (as long as they don’t have much of a conscience).

Speaking of Koepka, I wonder if his recent major title in the PGA Championship served roughly the same purpose as Joe Namath leading the New York Jets of the American Football League to an upset Super Bowl win in 1969 — legitimizing the fledgling league. The AFL-NFL merger happened largely because AFL owners had the financial wherewithal to get in a bidding war that the old-guard NFL didn’t have the stomach for.

As for the flip side, super agent Leigh Steinberg aptly summed it up in a tweet: “If there’s a ‘loser’ in this whole scenario, it’s the [PGA] Tour players who were cajoled, guilt-tripped and outright threatened not to leave the Tour for the vast riches of the PIF-backed LIV … only to watch the Tour dip right into those same riches.”

One thing that can’t be taken away from them is the satisfaction of having the courage of their convictions. But those convictions, in a way, were sabotaged by the PGA Tour.

In particular, I feel for Rory McIlroy, who became the de facto (and eloquent) spokesperson for opposition to LIV Golf, and gamely took on Mickelson, who was in many ways of face of LIV. I can’t help but wonder if McIlroy feels now like he was sold a bill of goods.

Mickelson, on the other hand, tweeted Tuesday: “Awesome day today.” It was, indeed, for him, Greg Norman and even former President Donald Trump, who has been a strong LIV backer and offered his golf courses for tournaments.

(I can’t wait until Tiger Woods weighs in. No one means more to the world of golf than Tiger, who turned down somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 million-plus from LIV frontman Norman. Tiger doesn’t need the money, obviously, but his approval, or disapproval, of this merger will speak multitudes.)

A huge winner, if you can overlook the distasteful aspects of the merger already delineated, are golf fans. This past year, with a splintered tour and constant sniping, has been distasteful. The idea of unity and global expansion is appealing. Having all the best men’s golfers in the world back together will elevate the game. And you can’t deny that the threat of a rival tour forced the PGA Tour to take steps to spruce up its own house, to the benefit of fans and golfers.

Meanwhile, remember the name Yasir Al-Rumayyan. He’s the head of the PIF and a trusted adviser of the Saudi crown prince. This new deal announced Tuesday installs Al-Rumayyan as the chairperson of the new combined entity that encompasses the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the DP World Tour. In other words, arguably the most powerful person in golf.

What this new empire will ultimately entail, and how it will run, remains a big mystery. But the biggest mystery is why this happened in the first place.

“It’s insanity,” an unnamed PGA Tour player told ESPN. “The LIV tour was dead in the water. It wasn’t working. Now, you’re throwing them a life jacket? Is the moral of the story to just always take the money?”

I think we’ve just learned the answer to that question.