Oller: Saudis big winner in merger with PGA Tour, which should put tail between its legs

Don’t look now, but the wrong side of history just won.

LIV Golf played the long game better than its enemy-turned-bestie, the PGA Tour, and on Tuesday formed an alliance with the U.S.-based league that swore it would never share a cab ride with those rotten scoundrels, much less join forces to create a single entity for the “good of the game.”

After two years of painting LIV Golf as morally bankrupt and deserving of a triple-bogey on human rights issues, the tour has done a hypocritical about-face by embracing the startup tour in a warm, if not overly sincere, man hug.

In agreeing to join LIV’ers around the country club campfire, singing "Kumbaya" between sips of Dom Perignon and bites of gold-plated graham cracker and Godiva chocolate s’mores, the PGA Tour handed the trophy to the Saudis. In the end, the Filthy Rich Billionaires caved in to the Ridiculously Filthy Rich Billionaires.

Oller: LIV Golf traitors deserve to hear from boo birds at tourneys

Call it a reversal of misfortune. Not long ago, the tour seemed to hold most of the best cards. Sure, a handful of big names opted out of the tour loyalty program by jumping to LIV. Brooks Koepka joined Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Phil “Hi, my name is Phil and I have a Twitter addiction problem” Mickelson, among others, on the LIV circuit. But the tour still had tradition, Tiger Woods and most of the best players in its corner.

“I would like to be on the right side of history with this one,” unofficial tour spokesman Rory McIlroy said in 2020, explaining how he valued “other things” more than money.

Those things included legacy, competing against the best players in the world in a legitimate 72-hole event, and stiff-arming a breakaway league backed by money men who find sport in sawing body parts off journalists.

I wish that was fake news, but a dismembered body says otherwise. Jamal Khashoggi was a reporter for The Washington Post who allegedly, ahem, was eliminated by bone saw at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Officially, the tour cautiously steered clear of directly using Khashoggi’s gruesome murder as proof the Saudis were hot on LIV, cool on live and let live. Unofficially, the tour knew it looked good in comparison to the thugs who established LIV as a means of sportwashing the stain of their atrocities. The Saudi plan was to create a legitimate golf tour that made people forget what was happening to dissidents behind closed doors. A kind of nothing-to-see-here sleight of hand. Tricky, tricky.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan mostly stayed in his lane, choosing not to dig too deeply into politicizing LIV’s connection to mass killings. He did publicly sympathize with the families of 9/11 victims (which explains why those families feel betrayed by him today). But he kept the majority of his criticism on the golf side, knocking the lack of legitimate high-pressure competition presented by LIV, where the no-cut events were finished in 54 holes. Putt-Putt meets Top Golf.

Privately, the commish knew whatever he said would not stop the beheadings. So he opted to stop the bleeding on his own tour instead, a decision that gets to the core of the merger. In the end, Monahan’s straight was trumped by a league flush with more money. He knew it. The Saudis knew it. And they made sure everyone else knew it, including tour players. LIV lived for the drip, drip, drip of players such as Jordan Spieth or Justin Thomas eventually giving in to the temptation of earning easy money by playing easy golf.

“Go ahead and ridicule us all you want,” LIV said with a laugh. “Go ahead and claim we’re not a threat. Our cash reserves rise so high to the sky we know we eventually will win.”

And make no mistake, winning is what the Saudis wanted all along. Their sole objective was to wait out Monahan and see who blinks first. And with more than $600 billion in their Public Investment Fund, the Saudi sultans knew their eyes, like their bank account, would never dry up.

Money carried the quasi-merger. The tour relishes the idea of the Saudis, and not just tournament sponsors, helping pay the freight for increased purses. But money also got help from Koepka, who won four major championships when he played on tour before his game turned to dust, largely due to injuries that sapped his confidence. When Koepka joined LIV, his on-course woes were another public relations escape for the tour.

Go down the line of former tour players who switched leagues. In nearly every case the most recognizable defectors were either inching toward or well past past their prime (Bubba Watson, Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson), head cases (Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed) or both (Watson). Even Koepka worried he was washed up, which played a role in him joining LIV in the first place. Concerned that his major championship paychecks were a thing of the past, he jumped ship after reportedly receiving a $50 million up-front signing bonus.

Then a funny thing happened, though Monahan likely was not amused. Koepka and Mickelson tied for second at the Masters in April, then Koepka won his third PGA Championship last month. Suddenly, the tour struggled to explain how it could claim to have the best players on earth when a LIV guy lifted the Wanamaker trophy.

So you mix the two catalysts – money and a major winner from LIV – and, kaboom, a new friendship forms.

Hey, it’s happened before. The NFL swallowed hard and welcomed the AFL in 1966. The National League cemented its relationship with the American League in 1903. Both the NFL and National League thought themselves superior to the newcomers but spun the mergers as good for the game. Self-serving, perhaps, but at least football and baseball executives were not butchering people.

For now, unity is good for golf fans, who can watch the best golfers all in one place and no longer need to pit “us” against “them.” And the tour just got more interesting again. That is a win-win.

“The last three years have been difficult for the game and the players,” Jack Nicklaus said. “He (Monahan) seemed pleased with the arrangement that will once again bring together the best players in the world.”

But the biggest win belongs to the Saudis, and by extension the former/future tour players who collected their millions from LIV and, presumably, get to return much richer and without having to put their tails between their legs. Details still need to be ironed out, but for now it is hard not to feel a sense of unfairness for players who remained loyal to the tour and are now financially poorer for it.

But not poorer in spirit. Players who received offers from LIV, but out of noble conviction refused to join, are the ones to find lasting peace. They, not the Saudis or PGA Tour decision-makers, are the real winners.

roller@dispatch.com

@rollerCD

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: LIV Golf wins war against PGA Tour, which tossed principles under bus