ORLANDO, Fla. — Forgive me, golf gods, for I have sinned.
I went to the LIV Golf tournament and had a great time.
The sun was shining.
The fans were frolicking.
The beer was flowing.
And the music was thumping.
“Don’t step out of this house if that’s the clothes you’re gonna wear,
I’ll kick you out of my home if you don’t cut that hair.
Your mom busted in and said, what’s that noise?
Aw, Mom, you’re just jealous it’s the Beastie Boys.
… YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PAR-TYYYYYY!”
It was almost as if this particular Beastie Boys anthem was selected by the Saudi-funded renegade circuit as yet another shot across the bow of the PGA Tour.
I mean, think about it: “Don’t step out of this house if that’s the clothes you’re gonna wear?”
And then here comes Bubba Watson and Sergio Garcia sauntering up to the first tee wearing – gasp! – shorts as they prepare to tee off for the start of the LIV Golf Orlando tournament at Orange County National on Friday afternoon.
“Your mom busted in and said, what’s that noise?”
You can almost see the staid and stuffy PGA Tour wagging a finger at the audacity of these young whippersnappers blaring hip hop and heavy metal music from loudspeakers lining the tee box and then the public-address announcer imploring the gallery to “get out your cell phones and make some noise. This is golf ... but LOUDER!!!”
Meanwhile, the JumboTron next to the first tee is showing edgy images and highlights of the LIV stars as paratroopers from the U.S. Navy SEALs are falling from the sky and making pinpoint landings on the first fairway.
As the last paratrooper soars downward with a huge American flag flapping in the wind behind him, the gallery roars.
Ah yes, nothing says LIV Golf like an American flag, right?
“This feels like I’m at an NFL game,” says Nate Jester, a beekeeper from Titusville. “It’s exciting. It’s refreshing. I was at the Arnold Palmer Invitational a few weeks ago and this is a different product and a different atmosphere. I love the PGA Tour, but I also think there’s a market for this type of golf.”
The LIV Tour better hope so because it will end up spending billions trying to get this upstart league off the ground amid the kicking and screaming of the PGA Tour and traditional golf fans. Yes, the LIV events are different and obviously geared toward attracting a younger demographic with a team format, a more lax dress code for golfers and shorter events. The first day of the three-day Orlando tournament teed off at 1:15 p.m. with a shotgun start and was done by 5:30 p.m. Fans could show up after lunch and be home in time for dinner.
Full disclosure: As an older golf fan, I prefer the more serene, quiet atmosphere of PGA Tour tournaments although even those events have gotten louder and more boisterous over the years. While I can see the appeal of the LIV format, I love the fact that golf has remained as the one stronghold of civility, decorum and even occasional solitude remaining in sports fandom.
Will LIV change all of that? We shall see. For right now, though, these LIV golfers may be making a lot of money, but they aren’t getting a whole lot of attention. The crowds at Orange County National were OK and obviously bolstered by cheap tickets and free parking, but nothing like the overflowing galleries and sold-out hospitality tents at Bay Hill last month. Likewise, the TV ratings on the hard-to-find CW Network are dwarfed by PGA Tour ratings.
Marquee LIV golfers such as Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, who once performed underneath the bright lights on Broadway, now are performing at the Yee Haw Dinner Show in Kissimmee.
LIV, of course, has pilfered some of the PGA Tour’s biggest stars with unprecedented guaranteed contracts (just like NBA and Major League Baseball players get), purses that dwarfed those on the PGA Tour and no-cut tournaments that mean everybody is assured of getting a paycheck.
The PGA Tour was forced to respond by increasing the size of its prize money and a few weeks ago announced that next season’s schedule will have significantly more no-cut tournaments with smaller fields in which everybody gets paid. So much for the PGA Tour portraying the LIV defectors as a bunch of money-grabbing malingerers who didn’t want to “earn” their money.
Mockingly tweeted LIV Golf when the PGA Tour announced the no-cut events right after The Arnold Palmer Invitational: “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the future.”
An argument could be made that if the PGA Tour had been proactive and showered its star athletes with more guaranteed money and perks, there would have never been a climate for the LIV Tour to exist.
Or, then again, maybe LIV was going to exist no matter what. After all, it is backed by the estimated $700 billion Saudi Public Investment Fund, and it’s no secret the Saudi government is using its golf league as a form of “sportswashing” — a blatant attempt to direct attention from the country’s multitude of human rights violations.
Consequently, the LIV golfers have been portrayed as sellouts who have sold their souls for the almighty dollar. Iconic golfers such as Phil Mickelson who were once beloved are now belittled. Golfers such as Northern Ireland’s Graeme McDowell — a U.S. Open champion who has been a longtime Orlando resident — was once considered one of the good guys in golf but now is portrayed as a black-hatted villain.
“I’m not a kind of guy who is used to having a huge amount of negativity pointed in his direction,” McDowell recalls about the tumultuous time last year when he first announced he was joining the LIV Tour. “I found it very hard to focus and concentrate on what I was doing. I found out I was more sensitive than I thought I was and I care what people think. It’s difficult to defend yourself when you have questions thrown your way that are basically not answerable when it comes to the geopolitics on this planet in regards to Saudi Arabia.”
In reality, it’s hard to answer a lot of geopolitical questions in regards to sports and consumerism in this country. It fascinates me as to why we expect American golfers taking Saudi money to be any different than major U.S. corporations (see Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc.) doing big business in Saudi Arabia.
And let’s not forget, the PGA Tour has been operating a tour in China for years despite the countless Chinese Uyghur Muslims who have been imprisoned and killed in slave labor camps. And we all know the social justice warriors in the NBA have been raking in billions in China for years despite the incalculable human rights violations in a country that likely thrust the COVID virus on the world and is one of America’s biggest enemies. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: The only time LeBron James and other NBA players “shut up and dribble” is when somebody brings up the atrocities happening in China.
I could go on and on about holding the LIV golfers to a double standard. How about all of us who pump money into the Chinese economy with our addiction to the Chinese-made iPhone? How about FIFA holding the World Cup in Qatar — a country that has similar human rights issues as Saudi Arabia in regards to women and members of the LGBTQ community?
But, hey, maybe a lyric from that Beastie Boys song booming through the loudspeakers at Orange County National this weekend put it best:
“Your pops caught you smoking, and he says, ‘No way!’
That hypocrite smokes two packs a day.”
Let’s all be honest with ourselves.
The LIV golfers are really just a drastic microcosm of the rest of us.
We all enjoy the fruits of freedom while supporting autocratic countries that rob its own citizens of the dream of democracy.
Contrary to what the Beastie Boys tell us, we don’t fight for our right to party in today’s global economic world of geopolitics.
We just conveniently turn a blind eye to human rights violations.
