sport news RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: Please, Johnson and Co, just admit it's all about the money trends now
There was something appropriate about it falling on George W Bush’s former press secretary to throw out the first question to golf’s rebel front in St Albans yesterday.
For who better than Ari Fleischer, one of the prime cheerleaders of the war in Iraq, and now an emcee for the Saudi-backed LIV tour, to hold a discussion with men attached to dubious causes? And what an opener he delivered on the grounds of the sedate Centurion Club in Hertfordshire.
What was it, he asked of Dustin Johnson, Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen and the 15-year-old Ratchanon Chantananuwat, that had attracted them to LIV? It didn’t take a giant leap to get from there to that old Mrs Merton classic to Debbie McGee: ‘So what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?’
Dustin Johnson will collect over £100m in appearance money from Saudi-backed LIV tour
We heard a few benign answers: Johnson is ‘excited’, and particularly by the three-day format and the absence of a halfway cut; Oosthuizen just wanted something different; McDowell spoke initially about golf borrowing from the success of cricket’s Twenty20; Chantananuwat was simply happy to be there. And of course none of them got into the weeds of the why until the microphone reached the wider gallery of media, when a deeper probing was directed at golfers who have taken the loot.
Sacks of it, upwards of £100million in appearance money in the case of Johnson, whose earnings on the PGA Tour had reached £60m before he announced yesterday that he was done with that work.
He, along with Phil Mickelson, is the interesting figure in this grubby business. He had said 107 days earlier that he was ‘fully committed’ to golf as we know it, which is to say golf on the PGA Tour. So, the question went, what changed?
‘At that time I was committed to playing the PGA Tour,’ he said. ‘I’m very thankful for everything it’s done for me. This is something I thought was best for me and my family. I think it’s great for the game of golf. That’s why I’m here.’
The two-time major champion (second from left) is part of the new breakaway Saudi-led series
Great for the game of golf? We’ll come back to that one in time,
