A wacky day at Bethpage yesterday, one in which biblical rains miraculously cleared in time for the Met. Golf Writers to experience the ritual abasement at the hands of the Black. Though maybe the biggest miracle was the absence of traffic on the way home... was it a Jewish holiday or something?
I was going to tread lightly on the LIV stuff, at least until this 15,000 word tome from the New Yorker dropped....
To state the obvious, you'll need to read this in its entirety and draw your won conclusions, because it's quite the hot mess. Though the combination of cheap shots against Greg Norman and the lack of actual familiarity with golf makes each individual paragraph amusing to parse. Let's start with this that should have been left on the cutting room floor, but provides a mirror into the roiling conconction of grievances that is Greg Norman:
Generally, the players who cared most about prestige and legacy aligned with the P.G.A. Tour. Its tournaments offered history and gravitas but no guaranteed income; you earned what you won inprize money. Golfers viewed it as the American-individualist ideal—“the purest form of meritocracy,” one golfer said. But the fault lines were idiosyncratic and difficult to untangle from old resentments. Whether a person stayed or left could be explained by some combination of political leaning, culture-war affiliation, sensitivity to peer pressure, and, most of all, naked self-dealing. “They don’t really care what the Saudis’ interest is,” the old hand told me. Sometimes it was a matter of a personal grudge. Did Woods stick with the Tour to protect his records or to snub Norman? They’d been at odds since at least 2006, when Woods moved to Jupiter without giving Norman a heads-up. (Last year, Norman sold his Jupiter spread for fifty-five million dollars to Leslie Wexner, the mogul with ties to Jeffrey Epstein.)
Is your head spinning yet? It's of no import, but that Woods-Norman bit is comedy gold, because on what planet would Tiger be expected to give Norman said "heads-up"? I'm sure the Shirtless One is clinging to the grudge, but I'm equally sure that Tiger's reaction to the Aussie is more accurately characterized as aggressive indifference.
Of course, there's fun to be had in the Norman Wayback Machine, including this:
"I never feared anything or anyone on the course, and I wasn't afraid to fail. So I think I'd do pretty well against Snead, Hogan, Tiger (Woods) and Phil (Mickelson) - whoever," Norman told the publication. "Tiger's a tough guy, but I was a tough guy on the course, too. I probably would have beat him."
Yeah, that's the ticket! The man that couldn't beat Bob Tway or Robert Gamez when it mattered...
But the piece is most interesting for its introduction of the Saudi officials involved:
Today, Saudi golf operations are within the purview of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the wealth fund and the chairman of Aramco. Rumayyan is polite, with wavy black hair and well-cut suits. In 2015, he was running a bank when M.B.S. offered him a job as an adviser. Later, M.B.S. named him head of the fund. Terms were not discussed. “You will do it,” M.B.S. said. An American analyst who has dealt with Saudi officials told me that Rumayyan “is known as being sort of obsequious.”
Why it's almost like MBS is....what's that term of art, a scary motherfucker. Memo to the New Yorker, everyone in Saudi is obsequious....well, either that or dead.
I went looking for Ivana Trump’s grave. The family had buried her on the grounds the previous week. It struck some people as strange. Who would want to spend eternity at her ex-husband’s golf club? On Twitter, rumors circulated about how the property was, technically, a cemetery, which would eliminate the club’s obligation to pay state property, income, and sales taxes.
In case you might have forgotten, Orange Man remains bad.
But they can't just report on a golf story without resorting to Das Kapital, can they?
liv appeals to the golfers who once identified with the white working class, or to the merely resentment-prone. “Guys who grew up a little hardscrabble, didn’t have country clubs to play at, that fought tooth and nail to play on the Tour, they say, Look, I’m gonna get what I can get,” the manager Mac Barnhardt told me. The P.G.A. Tour, meanwhile, is for the élite, the club crowd that likes to think there are things more important than money. Of course, it’s easier to look down on cash grabs when your cash was grabbed for you generations ago. The savvier golfers also have images to protect; rarefied dignity sells Rolexes and lands Goldman Sachs sponsorships. Nelson, the golf writer, told me that, if liv embodied Trumpism, “the P.G.A. Tour is not Abraham Lincoln, it’s Mitch McConnell—the power structure that says, Well, I don’t disapprove of élitist destructive behavior, but this is bad for business.”
Except when it doesn't:
Exceptions can be found on both sides, and, despite the exodus, the Tour is not wanting for Trump voters.
So your point is? Seriously, Phil is working class but Tiger isn't?
But have you wondered what the Saudis are getting for their $2 billion large? When their able to set aside their dialectical materialism, they actually go further than almost any media outlet to address the Saudi's objectives:
David Schenker, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, was in charge of U.S. policy and diplomacy in the Persian Gulf region from 2019 to 2021. He’s also a golf nut, with a fourteen handicap. “This is the intersection of my personal and professional lives!” he told me recently, of liv. Schenker believes that liv is best understood in the context of Gulf geopolitics: the budding rivalry between the Saudis and the Emiratis.M.B.S.’s stated goal is to diversify the economy and wean it from oil, a program he calls Vision 2030. The P.I.F. aims to spend forty billion dollars a year to bolster new Saudi industries—coffee production, electric cars, tech. One main objective is for Riyadh and Neom, a megacity being built on the Red Sea, to supplant Abu Dhabi and Dubai as the region’s de-facto capitals. Schenker said, “There was this picture, perhaps mistakenly, that M.B.Z.”—Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi—“was sort of a mentor to M.B.S. But Saudi Arabia increasingly sees itself as the leader.” M.B.S. has plans to double Riyadh’s population in the next decade. The kingdom will require companies that conduct business with state institutions to establish a regional headquarters in the country. The problem has been that a desert with no cinemas or alcohol, and with a religious police force that harasses women, is not very attractive.
Ringing any bells, Dear Reader? Again, the author commits journalism malpractice, but at least hints at the political divide in the Sunni Arab world. They can't quite bring themselves to disclose fully the background on Jamal Kashoggi, who was a Qatiri intelligence asset. There's a cold war (well, it went hot for Mr. Kashoggi) between the Emirates and the Saudis but, to admit this, would cast shade on their fellow travelers at the Washington Post.
The golf is a side show. In a world with competent political leadership, we sould be working to untie the Emirates and the Saudis in an alliance against the Iranians, whom the Sunni countries fear most. As you might have heard, significant progress was made in this direction up until January 2021, but now we have pushed the Saudis into a marriage of convenience with Putin. Given this:
The changes meant that the player exodus was likely to stabilize. Sorour and I retreated to a private suite beside the eighteenth green. He sat on a couch, his arms spread on the cushions, and said, “We have many players who want to come in now. But I need to protect my people.” He felt a sense of loyalty to the early adopters. The first ten had signed before liv had announced its launch. Another group had been ready to sign. Then Mickelson made his comments about the “scary motherfuckers,” and the league, suddenly, was on the brink of folding. Sorour told me, “I called the boss”—Rumayyan—“I said, ‘Everyone’s walking away. Do you want to do it, or not?’ ” Sorour told Rumayyan he had a plan: “Get the biggest mediocres, get the ten that we have, get you and I, and let’s go play for twenty-five million dollars.” Rumayyan decided to press ahead and announce the launch immediately.
How's that for a slogan? Golf, But With Mediocrities Being Louder™.
Here's the other a******e buddy of Phil, who make s great first impression:
The man wore pink pants and aviators. “They called me a scary motherfucker!” he said, laughing. It was Majed Al Sorour, the C.E.O. of the Saudi Golf Federation. He had a genial bearing, but seemed bothered by some of the press coverage. Unprompted, he said to me, “We don’t kill gays, I’ll just tell you that.” (As recently as 2020, an activist advocating for equal rights for L.G.B.T. people in the kingdom was arrested and tortured.)
Let me see if I have this right...those publicly behe4aded were all cis-gendered? Noted.
liv’s other pressing issue is that its tournaments don’t yet earn golf ranking points, making it more difficult to qualify for the majors. There was speculation that the Masters might ban liv players. “For now, the majors are siding with the Tour, and I don’t know why,” Sorour said. “If the majors decide not to have our players play? I will celebrate. I will create my own majors for my players.” He went on, “Honestly, I think all the tours are being run by guys who don’t understand business.”
So you paid Phil $200 million and it's the other guys that don't understand business? This is how they think they'll recoup their $2 billion:
Sorour said the P.I.F. had funding for liv through 2025. By then, he imagined, they would begin to cash out by selling off ownership in their twelve teams. The franchise model is how liv plans to recoup its investment. Sorour envisions owners building home golf courses, like a stadium for a football team. liv had given certain players equity stakes in their teams. (Some of the reported compensation figures, such as the seven to eight hundred million allegedly offered to Woods, included equity and potential sponsorships. Of the Woods offer, Sorour said, “It’s not straight-out money. I never offered him that money, not even close to that.”) There have been conflicting reports about the valuations that liv puts on its teams, which consist of four players: a hundred million, half a billion, a billion. Sorour told me it would vary by team. Outside liv, the numbers are treated skeptically. McIlroy told me, “People have to remember, golf is a niche sport. All you’re getting is four golfers. And I get it, some M.L.S. teams are worth seven hundred million dollars. But it’s all tied to the economics of the league, and right now that league doesn’t have any economics.”
Of sure, but meanwhile back here on Planet Earth:
We’ve got quite the scene in the Kingdom—a woman on stilts playing the violin as Brooks Koepka flirts with 59…with 17K people streaming on YouTube worldwide. pic.twitter.com/QihYx8dbN1
— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) October 14, 2022
Wow, that many! And this from the deceased Peter Allis:
Koepka v Uihlein in a playoff worth millions and there is literally no spectators watching on the course, nobody. pic.twitter.com/jBLvnm2iKv
— TweeterAlliss (@TweeterAlliss) October 16, 2022
I've got lots more teed up for you, but need to get on with my day. Due to the chilly forecast, the Wednesday Game™ has been moved to the afternoon, so we'll cover that stuff tomorrow morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment