When it comes to earning fans’ sympathy, golfers stand last in the line. These guys get to go to work in creased pants and polo shirts. While there, they have someone to carry their bags. Their factories are some of the prettiest places in the world. Not only that but the people who come to watch are expected to maintain reverential silence when players address their balls. And, after all this, the pro golfer can take virtually all day to play 18 holes.
By way of a counterpoint, we don’t often get to see the anguish that lies beneath their usual calm exteriors. Mentally, golf is a torturous game and one that only the few get to master for a sustained period. Consider how gifted Rory McIlroy is and then try to figure why he has not won a major championship since 2014. You can have up to 156 players in a regular PGA Tour event and only one will win. That leaves 155 losers, week in, week out.
Consider the financial rewards that, for the best at least, are an antidote to the angst. Unlike McIlroy, Rickie Fowler has not won a major but on the PGA Tour he has earned more than $40 million. Another man without a major, Matt Kuchar, has made $52 million in prize money. The numbers are mouth-watering but if you have been following the off-course manoeuvrings over the past few weeks, you will know that many of the top players believe they are not earning enough.
In early February the Saudi International will take place at the Royal Greens Golf and Country Club in King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia. At the same time the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am will be played on the Monterey Peninsula on America’s west coast. Given Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record and the brutal killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of its government, there is a strong case for arguing athletes should have nothing to do with the country’s attempt to show a more civilised face.
Of course this hope that pro athletes might stay well away from Saudi Arabia asks them to do something that businessmen and governments are not doing. The Saudis certainly want some big names at their tournament and they pay handsome appearance fees to the stars who come. Why else would any of the big names prefer the Greens Golf and Country Club to Pebble Beach? More than two years ago, Paul Casey wrestled with his conscience and his conscience won.
Advertisement
At the time Casey said “signing a deal and being paid to be down there . . . I would be a hypocrite if I did that. Anybody who says sport isn’t political, that’s rubbish. Sport is very political. I’m glad I took a stance, more so if it highlights the issues within the region.”
Casey is an ambassador for Unicef but last year he changed his stance on Saudi Arabia. “At that time a couple of years ago, I was a little bit torn. I’m a father, I’ve got two kids. My charitable ties with Unicef, and I felt that it was not right for me to play. I’ve spent the last two years thinking about that a lot. I’ve learnt an awful lot, read an awful lot. And one of the things that I was flat-out wrong on was . . . Unicef is not a political organisation.
“I was reminded that if you stay away, you don’t engage. If you don’t talk and you don’t visit, then you’re merely kind of hardening positions. And that actually doesn’t do any good. I think things are not black and white.” Second time round, Paul triumphed over his conscience.
According to the Golfweek magazine and digital platform, the list of players who have applied to play in February’s Saudi International includes Dustin Johnson, Graeme McDowell, Abraham Ancer, Lee Westwood, Tommy Fleetwood, Henrik Stenson, Kevin Na and Jason Kokrak. Before teeing it up at the Saudi tournament, these players need permission from the PGA Tour as Saudi clashes with Pebble Beach.
A recent press conference in New York where the Saudis outlined their plan for huge investment in golf and, in effect, the creation of a new tour has put them very much at odds with the PGA and European Tours. Golf’s locker room has been buzzing with talk of how much could be on offer on the new tour. It is said that a US Ryder Cup player has been offered $150 million for a three-year commitment to the Saudi-backed tournaments. Few dismiss the possibilities but none has as yet signed up. “It’s such an unknown quantity right now,” McDowell said last week. “It’s so hard to make a comment. Is it good for golf or bad for golf? It’s very difficult.”
Advertisement
Westwood was typically candid in his response to the creation of a Saudi-backed tour. “If someone stood here and offered me £50 million to play golf when I’m 48, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.
You are thinking these guys have more money than sense and an inflated sense of entitlement. I don’t believe so. In September Phil Mickelson spoke with Gary Williams of the Five Clubs podcast. He offered a fascinating insight. “Compared to golf,” he said, “football, baseball and basketball have roughly 55 per cent of their revenues going to the players and they have great representation. If they have a grievance, they’ve got somebody to go to.
“On the PGA Tour, we have 26 per cent of the revenues going to the players and if we have grievance, we go to the commissioner and he says, ‘Ah, I don’t want to pay you any more, I’m good.’ We don’t have a vehicle to make sure the top players get taken care of. For example, we don’t own our media rights at all, so anything that is shot at a tournament, the PGA Tour puts it up on its website and makes millions off it, like they did on Bryson [DeChambeau]’s tee shot on the 6th hole at Bay Hill.
“There are lots of ways that the top guys are taken advantage of. I don’t know what’s going to become of [the Saudi plan] but the competition is going to be good for the best players. For the first time the top players are being valued by the PGA Tour. The question is are we so far down the line on the bullying tactics that have been used to suppress the best players that we’ve reached a point where we can’t fix it internally. Or is it fixable? I don’t know.”
My guess is that there is only one certain outcome here: the richest players are going to get richer.
