sport news OLIVER HOLT: Everything we were told we should hate about LIV, we will now be ... trends now
Any fragile hope that dumb idealists might have harboured that the stand taken by the PGA Tour against Saudi-owned LIV Golf had anything to do with some last vestige of principle in sport was exploded into a few billion pieces of silver.
It's about the money, stupid. It's always about the money.
It's about empty words, too. The empty words spoken by hollow men like Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, who once poured scorn on those who would take blood money from a regime up to its neck in human rights abuses. And who has now jumped into bed with it.
Monahan deserves some credit for his front, I suppose. The same applies to Keith Pelley, the chief executive of the DP World Tour.
If they can look their members in the eye after this astonishing volte-face, then they have a stern constitution indeed. Monahan's u-turn is particularly spectacular. It was not long ago that he was damning the defectors to LIV Golf in emotive terms, invoking Saudi involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and saying that 'as it relates to the families of 9/11, I have two families that are close to me that lost loved ones, so my heart goes out to them'.
Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, spoke hollow words on the Saudi Arabian regime
Rory McIlroy gained admiration for his anti-LIV stance and went out on a limb in his opposition
Newcastle United has been turned into a fawning vassal state (above: Yasir Al-Rumayyan, left)
I wonder how those families feel about Monahan now?
Everything we were told we should hate about LIV, we will now be told is wonderful. Everything we were told was grubby, sordid, tawdry, mercenary and shameful about LIV, we will now be told is the way to grow to the game.
The R&A released a statement saying it was looking forward to working with the 'new entity', which made the merged PGA and LIV tours sound like something out of Revenge of the Sith. Which was appropriate.
The rest of us will just have to put up with that queasy feeling in our stomachs about a sport whose leadership has abrogated all responsibility for anything apart from raking in cash. No point in hand-wringing, though. It was ever thus.
A penny for the thoughts of some of the high-profile golfers who resisted the riches on offer from LIV because Monahan told them they owed it to the game not to defect.
A penny for the thoughts of Rory McIlroy, too, who gained so much admiration for his voluble stance against LIV and who went out on a limb in his
