The PGA Sells Out Golf Integrity To The Saudis, Symbolic of Our Increasingly Wider Loss To Greed And Immorality

By Donald A. Collins | 16 June 2023
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

Have you or I ever cheated at golf? Like taking a long gimmie putt or improving your unplayable lie in the rough?

The stark contrast between the standard behavior of ignoring the rules of golf by us recreational golfers and the PGA golf professionals gives us huge admiration for the discipline and dedication it takes to play the game at their level. Yes, it’s a mania most people don’t take on and after all golf is just a game.

But perhaps that’s what makes golf so intriguing to watch. In PGA medal play (counting all strokes hole by hole to your total score) there are no gimmies or illegally fixing bad lies.

Golf outcomes can be so seemingly unfair or involving huge luck! Again, this pantomime models in real time the ups and downs of life, so those playing golf for such big money can capture so many viewers us not just aficionados like me!

As we watched the PGA purses rise to levels unimaginable to most pros in Arnold Palmer’s heyday when he won the PGA money title as I recall for about $250,000 in 1973 for playing the full season on the PGA tour.

Arnie gets credit for causing both fan interest and tour purses to rise dramatically over the years. For example, “Palmer ranked third in our most recent look at the world’s highest-paid retired athletes with earnings of $42 million in 2015.”

You can read here about his career.

Then Tiger Woods came along and bested even greats like Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Jack Nicholas in terms of upping the money.

Read here the statistics.

Now the just made shocking back room deal of the Saudi sellout!

Sally Jenkins said it best when she urged the PGA players themselves to take back their tour and run it themselves!

Example: “You think Monahan has been overpaid and over-luxed up to this point, with his $14 million in compensation for 2021 — double what Jordan Spieth made in prize money — and his reported use of the tour’s Citation X jet to go to Steamboat Springs and his kids’ college campuses? Just wait. Here’s the sort of thing golfers can expect from letting honchos with weekender snap hooks reach private arrangements in their club chairs. The last time the Saudis made a large sports-washing acquisition, it was the Newcastle soccer team in October 2021. The deal was brokered by a British banker named Amanda Staveley. She wound up with 10 percent of the club and a seat as director of the team.”

Read her entire masterful truth telling June 13th Washington Post commentary here.

Lose your integrity and you lose your credibility!! While you pro golfers may lose Saudi money, you guys get your faithful audience back, applauding your decision!

And the net worth of so many pro golfers boggle the mind of the average TV golf viewer. While many professional golfers aren’t at 30-year-old Jordan Spieth’s financial altitude of $110 million net worth, some like Phil Michelson who helped lead others to defect to the LIV tour for big money joins a long list of golfers on both tours who are rich.

Read here.

Meantime we can hope the PGA tour can unconvict itself of its loss of integrity and regain the respect of us amateur fans.

Fixing golf would add a significant layer of optimism to multiple venues, including the certainty of preserving a restored level of integrity to our democracy.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us” and “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”.

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