Thomas Jefferson didn’t have the golf industry in mind when he wrote that money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations, but his observation that a man’s management of his purse speaks volumes about his character can easily be applied to the sport’s leaders. Tuesday’s announcement that the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV will form a joint entity offered little actual detail on the future shape of golf, but leaves no ambiguity as to the moral weakness of those guiding it.
The statement announcing peace in our time was flush with the kind of boilerplate banalities that corporate ciphers usually hide behind. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the bag man for MBS, declared himself “proud to partner with the PGA Tour.”
