sport news Civil war driven by bitterness and greed is tearing golf apart trends now
No major has ever been staged against a backdrop quite so toxic as the 104th US PGA Championship at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma this week.
In a part of the nation where key early battles in the American Civil War took place, it is the golfers who are now bitterly divided and ready to split into two camps. On one side, the youthful unionists, happy with the extraordinary amounts they are making on the long-established PGA Tour. On the other, the grumpy old rebels, ready to jump ship and forsake their principles in favour of the easy millions on offer from the sportswashing Saudis.
Who could possibly have predicted it would come to this a year ago, when Phil Mickelson became the oldest major winner in history with a classic story of beating Father Time that resonated way beyond the sport’s traditional boundaries?
Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman talk on a practice round prior to the PIF Saudi International
Now it is an all-too-familiar tale of latent greed that threatens irrevocable harm to the game, with Mickelson both the instigator and the principal fall guy. It sums up the troubled, present state of the sport that the man who would have been feted down every fairway in less divisive times does not even feel in the right frame of mind to make it to the first tee. On Friday, Mickelson announced he would not be defending his title. His exile that began in January goes on.
It was at the PGA at Kiawah Island 12 months ago that the first rumblings of a breakaway tour were heard. Behind the scenes, Saudi representatives met with players and agents. We now know Mickelson was a prime mover on behalf of the Saudis. He was consumed with bitterness at what he considered the ‘obnoxious greed’ of the PGA Tour in denying him the ability to organise his own media rights, even though there is not a major sport allowing such a facility, nor could survive with one.
While everyone else was saluting Mickelson after the sacrifices he had made to win a major just a month shy of his 51st birthday, the man himself was making his plans to tear the game in two.
The American is both the instigator and the fall guy for the attempted Saudi takeover of golf
Greg Norman has landed himself in hot water after an ill-advised comment about the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi
Mickelson seemed to have plenty of other players on board and ready to join the Saudis for incredible sums until he gave two deeply damaging interviews at the start of the year that would lead to his prolonged sabbatical.
In the first, he burned his bridges with many of the young stars and the hierarchy with a full-frontal assault on the PGA Tour. In the other, he perhaps revealed his true thoughts about the Saudis, calling them ‘scary motherf***ers’.
Over the past few months,
