CLEARY: Zed’s dead but LIV lives, one year on from predicted doom

It was 12 months ago when Golf Digest reported that “a side agreement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund proposed that LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman would be terminated.”

No matter the enmity between Norman and Jay Monahan, seems rather harsh, wot? Ho-ho.

The Australian Financial Review added: “Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has agreed to invest more than $US1 billion ($1.5 billion) in a new commercial entity controlled by the PGA Tour, and Greg Norman will be ousted as the chief executive of LIV Golf if the business deal between the Saudis and the tour is finalised, a tour executive told US Congress on Tuesday.”

Same fellow also told Congress that LIV Golf teams could be captained by Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, which was news to Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.

Pretty cool idea, though.

As my bookmaker would tell you, it’s a perilous endeavour, the future-telling business, and understanding the minds of men harder still, particularly if you’re American and generally haven’t, you know, been to other countries where other people live and thus can find it hard to empathise with the motivations of people, particularly Middle Eastern ones who have so much money they literally don’t care about splashing about a billion here, a billion there, so that they might play in a Pro-Am a couple times a year with Phil Mickelson.

Norman told business types that players want to play on the LIV Golf League and PGA Tour, and that “we want to be supportive of the golfing ecosystem. We want to grow the golfing ecosystem. Our platform is different than the PGA Tour’s platform … Is there room for both of us? One hundred percent, and they’re realising that now”.

And, 12 months on, that appears to be where we’re at. And why not? Why wouldn’t LIV Golf continue on? And with Norman at the helm? Because Jay Monahan doesn’t get on with him? Who is Monahan now but another suit divvying up the investment in the third party beast begat by the con-joining of evil triplets LIV Golf, PGA Tour and Public Investment Fund?

Norman is the Saudis’ man. And so is Monahan, after a fashion. Yasir Al-Rumayyan is the wheeler-dealer, and also chairman of Aramco, the state-owned Saudi petrol company. And thus, he oversees more money than possessed by all the gods there have ever been.

And if that guy, second only to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, says Norman should remain chief executive of their baby, then, one would suggest, that is what is going to happen.

LIV Golf has carved a stake in the golf-watching market. It remains a relatively small one – I think because it’s too hard to find on the telly when you’re flicking through Foxtel. It’s been a slow burn to relevance, to the mainstream, at least outside those parties in Adelaide. 

And so they talk, framework agreement this, framework agreement that. And someone’s playing hard ball business. But, surely, money will win. And surely the rich people will work out that the world’s best players could play LIV events and PGA Tour ones. And that would be win-win for all. Throw on four Majors a year and boom, the big dogs will earn more for playing less.

You think that’s not attractive to a buck pro golfer? Have to be preferable to bashing yourself up on the PGA Tour’s conveyor belt of grinding hip flexors and red-raw wrist ligaments, and tournaments ‘elevated’ not by the quality of course or by history but rather the amount of money they can squeeze out of sponsors.

Brooks Koepka, one would suggest, would be a fine drawcard for the sponsors of PGA Tour events. PHOTO: Getty Images

Whatever the outcome of the interminable business dealings between those dividing up the Great Pie, it’s no longer ‘us’ versus ‘them’. There are LIV people and PGA people but there aren’t rebels or loyalists. There are just guys who took money to go or guys who took money to stay.

The U.S Government interviewed the major players in the ‘merger’ or whatever they’re now calling it and ordered that players may not be ordered to play one tour or the other.

And thus, the top players, the stars of the entertainments that Big TV would use to sell advertising upon its broadcasts, needn’t stay ‘loyal’ to either tour. And given Monahan’s hopped in bed with the Terrible People he so clutched pearls about, why would they?

Big TV will want to broadcast the best players. And Big TV no longer has a conflict of interest about broadcasting LIV or PGA Tour.

As the hottie at the end of Trading Places asks about the choice of lobster or the cracked crab, “Why can’t we have both?”