Martin Samuel: To LIV Golf objectors like Rory McIlroy, PGA merger feels like abject surrender

Rory McIlroy and Collin Morikawa were among those who stridently resisted LIV Golf. Yet after a shock merger with the PGA Tour, the winners are all on the Saudi side, writes MARTIN SAMUEL.

Collin Morikawa and Rory McIlroy were strident opponents of LIV Golf, yet it has now merged with the PGA Tour. Picture: Michael Reaves/Getty Images

In an interview with CBS last year, Rory McIlroy was asked to clarify some of his more strident opinions on LIV Golf. He most certainly did that.

“There’s no room in the golf world for LIV Golf,” McIlroy insisted. “I don’t agree with what LIV is doing. If LIV went away tomorrow, I’d be super happy.”

So that must have made him, what, super sad on Tuesday? For far from going away, LIV and its Saudi Arabian paymasters – having merged with the PGA Tour – pretty much own McIlroy’s sport now, and that means they own him, too. The Saudis are where they wanted to be when this all began: inside.

Their investment will help fund McIlroy’s tour, McIlroy’s events, McIlroy’s prize winnings. The players that resisted LIV’s money, like McIlroy and Collin Morikawa, must feel very conflicted now. Morikawa said he found out the news on Twitter, meaning the LIV-adverse were not kept in the loop even by their own organisation.

Maybe the PGA Tour and DP World Tour knew what was coming, if the news leaked. It seems unimaginable that McIlroy – by far the most outspoken of the resisters – was not given a heads up, but certainly he would have been in a minority. It may explain some of the kinks in his game, if he did know. This as good as makes his actions across the last two years meaningless.

Phil Mickelson of HyFlyers GC hits out of the bunker during a LIV Golf Invitational event at Trump National Golf Club. He made a fortune by joining LIV. Picture: Rob Carr/Getty Images/AFP

The winners are all on the other side. Money won. Saudi Arabia won. Greg Norman won. Sergio Garcia won. Donald Trump won. All the rivals that mocked the golfers who stayed loyal, who made little jibes at McIlroy personally – Phil Mickelson recently said that no LIV team would want him “because they’d have to deal with all his BS” – they won. The reaction on Tuesday summed up the divide; LIV golfers celebrating, PGA and DP Tour golfers perplexed, angry and in the dark.

Michael Kim’s social media seemed to capture the mood. From what the hell is going on, to speculation that a supposedly player-run organisation kept between “five and seven” employees informed, to a facetious offer to live stream a scheduled players meeting that afternoon. No matter what money was on the table, there was definitely a feeling that the loyal players had been sold out.

And we can argue that this is common sense for the game of golf. That a Ryder Cup tournament without Brooks Koepka in the United States team is devalued and hardly worth watching. That much is true. In the beginning, when LIV golfers were going to be barred from the majors, the entire sport appeared lost. In pure sporting terms, then, this is a positive development. Europe and the United States will meet at their strongest. Financially and competitively, the future is secure.

Yet to those who claim to have resisted LIV’s money on ethical grounds, who said Saudi Arabia’s determination to buy a sport made them feel queasy, this will feel like the most abject surrender. “Welfare check on Chamblee,” Koepka tweeted mockingly of the Golf Channel pundit Brandel Chamblee.

Yet the crime of Chamblee has been to link the state of Saudi Arabia with murderous repression, and question its place in the sport. Does he really deserve to have his face rubbed in this? Is it really such a triumph that golf has chosen to cash in? It is hard to see this as the good guys winning.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan with Tiger Woods. After denouncing LIV, Monahan has joined forces with the Saudi-backed golf enterprise. Picture: Stan Badz/PGA TOUR

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan may feel he has saved his job as well as preserving golf by striking this deal but, reputationally, he is finished. One by one, he was condemned by the men whose careers he must oversee.

“Tell me why Jay Monahan basically got a promotion to CEO of all golf by going back on everything he said the past two years,” Dylan Wu asked.

“Mickelson went up in flames in the media and now everyone’s finally realising he was right. The PGA Tour does whatever they feel like.”

Put to Monahan, he hid behind realpolitik. “Things have changed,” he said. But, really, they have not. Taking the money is the oldest tale in sport, the irony being that very recently Monahan dug at LIV by rhetorically asking if anybody had ever felt the need to apologise for being a member of the PGA Tour. They will now.

– The Times

Originally published as Martin Samuel: To LIV Golf objectors like Rory McIlroy, PGA merger feels like abject surrender