It’s money that they love

You can buy anything. Maybe not love, but as Randy Newman observed, it can get you a “half-pound of cocaine and a 16-year-old girl and a great big long limousine on a hot September night.”

It is important to remember this. Take your eye off the ball for a second and you’re liable to be embarrassed.

Remember how the big objection to professional golfers taking huge checks to go play hit-and-giggle events on the newly formed LIV Golf tour was that they would be taking blood money from a evil regime trying to sportswash an atrocious human rights record that includes the murder of an American journalist and probable complicity in the terrorist attacks that occurred in this country on Sept. 11, 2001?

We thought that was the problem.

But money makes problems go away. Last week the Saudis, through their Public Investment Fund, bought professional golf. They made an offer that Joseph William “Jay” Monahan IV, in his capacity as commissioner of the PGA Tour, didn’t want to refuse. So he took back all the mean things he said about the Saudis over the past couple of years and agreed to become the lapdog of a bonesaw-wielding regime.

Because Joseph William “Jay” Monahan IV obviously needs more money.

Last Thursday, a couple of days after the merger was announced, The Wall Street Journal reported that in a speech at PGA Tour headquarters, Monahan told his employees the Tour simply couldn’t afford to keep up the fight against LIV. He said the Tour had spent around $50 million in legal fights with LIV, and it had used $100 million of its reserves to pay for its schedule.

“We cannot compete with a foreign government with unlimited money,” Monahan said, according to the Journal. “This was the time. … We waited to be in the strongest possible position to get this deal in place.”

According to the Journal, Monahan was also asked how he could explain his new willingness to accommodate the Saudis given the kingdom’s treatment of women. He said “circumstances” required him to think about “all of our players … everybody in this room.”

“I understand all the human rights concerns,” he said. “I’ve had them myself.”

But, the money.

What happened here is clear: The Saudis successfully completed an old-fashioned hostile takeover. They exerted overwhelming financial pressure on the PGA Tour, then offered a lifeline. They gave Monahan a nifty title and probably a big raise. All he has to do is live with himself and his hypocrisy and kowtow to his excellency Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

Just a few weeks ago, Monahan and the PGA Tour policy board turned down a deal in which Raytheon would become the title sponsor of the Byron Nelson Classic, because Raytheon was selling military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

In an interview with CBS’ Jim Nantz last year, Monahan claimed to “have two families that are close to me that lost loved ones” in the 9/11 attacks and said, “I would ask any player that has left, or any player that would consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’”

Last week Monahan said he regretted not being able to consult with those families or other “very important constituents” (like the PGA Tour players he allegedly works for) before agreeing to pursue the merger. So guys like Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, who reportedly turned down a nine-figure offer from LIV, were left to find out about the deal after the fact, while most tour players found out about it on social media.

But Monahan and his board, which includes lawyer Ed Herlily, whose firm is handling the merger for the tour (hat tip to Sally Jenkins for noticing this), were doing it for them.

Monahan says he’s willing to own the hypocrisy. (What a mensch.) He says this was the only way. The situation was desperate. Why should we believe him?

I don’t. Because the PGA Tour was winning the battle against LIV.

Perhaps not on the balance sheet, not yet, but the product was better. It was just a matter of time before the best players who took the LIV money, like this year’s PGA champion Brooks Koepka, were going to try to find a way to petition to get back onto the real tour.

Because the world’s best players want to compete against the world’s best players, not give shotgun-started resort course exhibitions in goofy team jerseys and dad shorts. The LIV Tour was the XFL, a circus sideshow featuring past-their-prime stars and main chance journeymen playing a confusing, tricked-up version of the game on a cable backwater channel.

Sure, the Saudis have a lot of money, but their purpose was never to take over golf. Their purpose is to diversify their assets, while at the same time convincing the world that they are more about pro wrestling, soccer football, Formula 1 racing and golf than murdering journalists, sponsoring terrorism, beheading members of their Shi’a minority, torturing human rights advocates, prohibiting woman from driving, harassment and intimidation against Saudi dissidents living abroad …

No, they are the wild and crazy guys with the 12-handicaps and $500 tips for the cart girls.

Had the PGA Tour—Jay Monahan and his flunkies—resisted, the Saudis might have gotten bored and moved on. You can always find someone to take your money. Money is popular, no matter how much blood stains it.

I heard Michael Wilbon, a sports guy who is generally thoughtful when not playing the curmudgeon on TV for money (we all have to make a living), say that given the atrocities that the United States of America has committed over the course of its history, none of us have any right to be snippy with the Saudis. Really?

Wilbon is not wrong about America’s sometimes shameful history, but we ought to stand up against that which is observably evil and cynical any and every time we have the opportunity, even if it means we have to forgo a bribe or two.

What scares me is that we’re living in a time when people seek to rationalize and excuse whatever accrues to their advantage because nobody is perfect and money spends. That we have all become some version of the Bond villain that is Phil Mickelson, willing to make common cause with “scary motherf******,” because we might realize some personal benefit.

Because we have to do what’s best for our family. How are they going to get that cocaine, those girls and that limo?