OPINION Tiresome shake-up of professional golf is a circus and bad for public golf
Top-tier professional golf is in turmoil, and it’s tiresome, tedious and bad for grassroots golf.
Professional golf has always been a different game from the one we play. The enormous distances, overweight golf bags, unnaturally manicured fairways and incredible skillsets make for an unfamiliar sport.
Big-time tournament golf is a different world. A travelling circus. A freak show of truly remarkable golf.
And right now, it feels like it’s not just a different game, but a game played on a distant planet. If it felt unfamiliar before, it’s now an unrecognisable mess mired in a grab for vast sums of money.
Most Australian golf fans would agree that professional golf needed a shake-up. Australian tournament golf has all but died a slow death thanks to the wrap-around season and big money offered by the PGA Tour.
But it turns out “big money” is a relative term.
The big top has been blown off one circus and landed on a bigger one with more sparkle, noise, and much more money— a circus directly funded by a regime with a well-documented list of human rights violations.
To the everyday golf fan, it’s in danger of becoming less attractive, less exciting – all in the name of sportswashing. And the money has divided golf. Rich people, rich nerds now squabbling over unimaginable sums of money.
The biggest problem for golf is that it plays on the false prejudices already in play by those who wish to see golf courses disappear altogether.
The erroneous view that golf is a game played by rich people in private, exclusive golf courses will become more entrenched and encourage more people to shut down more golf.
And it won’t be the private golf courses to close; it will be the public, open access, grassroots golf courses that run at a sliver of the cost of the private golf course. A grain of sand compared to the big money talked about under the Studio 54 big top.
I’m exasperated to think I don’t care.
I care that the money comes from a despotic regime, and I care enough to think that just because other sports turn a blind eye to the ethics of funding a sports league with blood money, it doesn’t mean that golf should. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
It’s tiresome and messy and is being played out in courtrooms instead of the fairways.
Professional golf has never felt more disconnected from golf.
I’m hoping LIV golf does for international golf what world series cricket did. The US PGA have treated everyone outside the US as insignificant for many years. Competition is always a good thing. Hopefully we get a better international product in the near future. We just need better broadcasting to come with it.