The PGA's Jay Monahan Explains the Merger with LIV and Sets a World Record for Shameless Hypocrisy That Will Never Be Broken
Rob Carr. Getty Images.Jack Nicklaus' 18 Majors. His 24 year gap between his first and last Major. Tiger Woods' 683 weeks at No. 1 in the world. Byron Nelson's 11 consecutive wins. Phil Mickelson's 1,353 straight weeks in the Top 50. All of these are golf records that will never be beaten in our lifetimes. But PGA commissioner Jay Monahan just set a new standard that will never, ever be approached. Not even until the heat death of the universe.
Just over a year ago, when he couldn't even allow the name LIV Golf to pass his lips and taint his pristine reputation, which is as pure as Caesar's wife, Monahan was asked why the guys who chose to take tens - and in some cases hundreds - of millions of Saudi Oil Bucks couldn't also play on his sacred tour:
“Why do they need us so badly? Because those players have chosen to sign multi-year lucrative contracts to play in a series of exhibition matches against the same players over and over again. …
”It’s not an issue for me because I don’t work for the Saudi Arabian government. It probably is an issue for those players that chose to take that money.
“I think you’d have to be living under a rock to not know there are significant implications. Two families close to me lost loved ones. I would ask any player who has left or any player who would ever consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologise for being a member of the PGA Tour?’”
You'd have to be living under and even bigger, deeper rock not to know what he was driving at. He was waving the bloody shirt of 9/11. Not at all subltely, at that. Straight up implying that if you earn money in a foreign-backed golf league, you're an indicted co-conspirator. You're Mohamad Atta with a great mid-iron game. That there's no moral distinction between you and the guys with the box cutters. Stripe a drive to the center of the fairway, and you might as well have been gunning the thrusters as you went into the Pentagon. Every birdie putt is just another airliner hitting another tower of our liberty.
To the point he wasn't even shy about bringing the victim's surviving loved ones into the discussion. He felt just that strongly about how bad this was. Not only for golf. But for America. It was an attack on our very way of life.
That's how it was. This is how it's going:
Source - “After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” said PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA TOUR’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV – including the team golf concept – to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans. Going forward, fans can be confident that we will, collectively, deliver on the promise we’ve always made – to promote competition of the best in professional golf and that we are committed to securing and driving the game’s future.
“We are pleased to move forward, in step with LIV and PIF’s world-class investing experience, and I applaud PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan for his vision and collaborative and forward-thinking approach that is not just a solution to the rift in our game, but also a commitment to taking it to new heights. This will engender a new era in global golf, for the better.”
OK. So we're cool now?
We've managed to put the worst terrorist attack in US hist--, let's make that, "two years of disruption and distraction" behind us on this historic day? And it's not a moral issue like it was last year, mind you. It's about a transformational partnership that recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA. It's about that team golf concept now. Which, let's face it, is what the hijackers were trying to take away from us, amrite?!? I mean, what's more American than teamwork?
And let's not for one second suggest this is about how much Monahan's tour can drill down into those vast reserves of Saudi oil money. He's not doing it for the PGA. He's going it for the players, commercial and charitable partners. And above all else, us fans.
Now, as far as that subset of golf fans who are both friends of his and lost loved ones in the attacks, he failed to mention them this time out. But let's just assume they're all on board with this, because they're also share his commitment to taking it to new heights. And if we don't all come together to engender a new era in global golf, then the terrorists have one.
Just because the internet has never spoken fluent Sarcasm and gets more deaf to it all the time, let me spell this out so it's not misinterpreted. I don't care that golfers took the LIV money. It was ludicrous to ever expect them to turn down guaranteed paydays, especially with their limited earning windows and the fact that they're all one case of the yips or a jealous wife attacking them with a golf club for texting their sidepiece on Thanksgiving away from losing it all. More to the point, it's even crazier to expect fucking golfers to take moral stances to save the world when we're buying all our fuel, technology and manufactured goods from governments who consider us the Great Satan. I can totally LIVe (see what I did there) with the business decisions of Brooks Koepka or Bryson Dechambeau. It's a free country. (This one is, anyway.)
But what no one should have a subatomic particle of tolerance for is this colossal fucking fraud invoking a horrible atrocity in order to win sympathy to his cause, then forget all about it a year later just to make a buck. The Tour needs to fire this asswipe immediately. And replace him with Greg Norman, who might be a hypocrite too. But he could never compete at this corporate scumbag's level.
