The golf world was upended on Tuesday when the PGA announced a shock merger with the breakaway Saudi-funded tour LIV Golf, stunning PGA players and forcing the tour's loudest anti-LIV voices into some incredibly awkward positions.
Rory McIlroy, for example, has been perhaps the PGA Tour's most outspoken player on the threat posed to golf by LIV and the Saudis. In an interview after the merger, he said that he was feeling "somewhat like a sacrificial lamb and feeling like I've put myself out there." But he also said that he thinks "the future of the PGA Tour looks brighter as a whole."
McIlroy went on to express his confidence in PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who is currently working on a shit-eating tour of his own. Monahan infamously implied that golfers who signed with LIV were offering their tacit endorsement of the Saudi monarchy's role in the 9/11 attacks. "I would ask any player that has left or any player that would consider leaving," Monahan said at the Canadian Open last year, "'Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?'"
What could Monahan possibly say to the world now that he's negotiated a merger between his organization and the people about whom he said so many bad things? Basically, My bad, it's all good now though haha, at least this is good for golf? You will also notice that Monahan does not quite apologize for the "communication" issues that he created, and also regrets.
Monahan has the most egg on his face and the most shit in his mouth, though to get the 360-degree treatment this story of selling-out deserves, we need perspective from both sides. On Tuesday night, CNN's Middle East expert Kaitlan Collins conducted an interview with LIV shill Bryson DeChambeau, in which he laid out the two stated goals of LIV Golf and the Saudi Public Investment Fund vis-a-vis their acquisition of the PGA: 1) "mend the world and make it a better place" by learning and growing from the experience of helping facilitate the deadly terror attacks of 9/11, and 2) "a way to provide great entertainment for everybody around the world." When pressed about all the other regressive horrors inflicted by the Saudi state on their own population and the world at large, DeChambeau continued to use some very YouTube-apology-ass language, claiming that while he is not a big politics guy, he does know the Saudis "are trying to be better allies."
In the end, every golfer who jumped ship for LIV, anyone who's going to shut up and take the money after talking a big game, and any PGA Tour hack involved in this merger, will probably never face any serious consequences or meaningful blowback for their decisions. I at least sort of respect Monahan for saying, in euphemistic language, this was about getting the bag, nothing more, nothing less.
