Saudi sportswashing signals golf’s long struggle

Are any Golf fans looking forward to the planned Saudi Golf Super League with enthusiasm and bated breath? It seems unlikely, and more probable that they are groaning, not cheering.

There seems to be no more a happy welcome for it than there was to the wealthiest football clubs’ plans for a European Super League. There may even be less.

Saudi Arabia may, in some disreputable way, be an ally of the West. It is undoubtedly a rich market, but it is also a corrupt and brutal state that is institutionally misogynist, tortures dissidents and murders journalists who have criticised the regime.

Of course, it is immensely rich. Well, radix malorum est cupiditas, and Saudi gold is about to be showered on any golfers gullible and fool enough to be willing to be wooed. It is sad to see the long-time respected Greg Norman ready to be its figurehead.

Money talks in soft and seductive whispers. The USPGA has responded predictably by warning any golfers who take the Saudi gold that they will be banned from the PGA tour and, consequently, the Ryder Cup.

There is a sad familiarity here. Cricket found itself in this predicament more than thirty years ago when the Australian TV mogul Kerry Packer created his breakaway World Series, which attracted Test players, mostly from Australia and the West Indies, but also from England and South Africa.

But Packer’s aim was limited. He wanted to secure the rights which he had previously been denied to coverage of Test matches in Australia on his TV channel.

Moreover, there was good reason for players to be tempted and to take his bait. Test cricketers were then meanly paid. Nobody could say that of top golfers today. They are all already immensely rich.

In any case, the Packer comparison is not perfect. His aim was limited, and when his demands were satisfied, he disbanded his circus, and things went back to normal – except that Test cricketers were now much better paid.

It’s not clear that the Saudi league will take off. Three of the world’s best players – the Open Champion Collin Morikawa, Jon Rahm (currently world number one) and Rory McIlroy – have all condemned it and warned young players that they risk stalling their careers. Some of the elderly seem to be ambivalent. England’s Lee Westwood is, sadly, reported to be among them.

Then there is Phil Mickelson, unquestionably one of the greatest golfers of the last thirty years, but whose opinions seem as ill-judged, wild and wayward as his driving from the tee.

Just at present, he seems to be sounding off in all directions. On the one hand, he has called the people behind the Saudi rebel tour “scary motherf*****s”; on the other hand, he is at war with the PGA denouncing its “obnoxious greed” because it controls players’ “image rights” – something which helps the PGA to stage tournaments in which the prize-money is much higher than the public interest in some of these run-of-the-mill tournaments might be thought to justify.

Mickelson has not done too badly out of the PGA’s running of the game. His career earnings from prize money being, it seems, are just three million short of a hundred million dollars.

Meanwhile, scores of middle-ranking golfers, the sort who may be listed in the world’s Top 20 only once or twice in their career, are also dollar multi-millionaires. They have not done badly out of the PGA’s stewardship of the American game. The European tour has also provided a pretty good living for many golfers whose tournament wins are almost as rare as white blackbirds.

Nevertheless, though I guess that the Saudi “sportswashing” enterprise is likely to be seen off, golf has its problems. Some refreshment is needed. Few except the keenest fans take much interest in the week-after-week succession of 72-hole stroke-play tournaments.

They still attract advertisers for TV slots and, in the USA at least, adequate if increasingly ill-behaved crowds. But most, even of the top golfers, are known only within the game. I would guess that Rory McIlroy is the only European player known beyond golf fans, and when Tiger Woods and Mickelson limp on to the Seniors tour, the game may not be in better health there.

Golf is a sport for individuals. In tournament golf, you primarily play the course rather than the other competitors. More variety and more eye-catching events seem desirable.

Internationally cricket has been effectively promoted, and one might say revived by the T20 short form of the game and the leagues, notably the IPL, that flourish now.

Traditionalist old fogeys like me may sigh, but T20 cricket is to the taste of a vast and, importantly, young public today, as with rare exceptions, the 3-day or 4-day or 5-day first-class game no longer is.

American and European golf might be wise to take note, and devise new structures – match-play leagues perhaps – which might appeal to a younger, wider and differently demanding public.