Sportswashing is not supposed to make commercial sense. Therein lies the reason that no normally functioning business saw fit to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a disruption plan for golf. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) can attempt to rebrand a kingdom for which the murder of a journalist and human rights atrocities are typical reference points with the benefit of an apparently bottomless pit of cash. If the PGA and DP World Tours find themselves embroiled in a commercial long game with the Saudi-backed LIV Series, they know they will be outmuscled.
Events of recent days did, however, serve as a reminder of what advantage players of a certain vintage have taken of Saudis bearing gifts. There is cause to ponder the point at which the PIF – which is by very definition answerable to somebody – reflects on the value of golfers who have slipped towards irrelevance. That day of reckoning will arrive. It is merely a question of when.
