Rahm Gone. Will LIV Survive The Happy Gilmore Strategy?

The only certainty in 2022 was that the financial benefits for player would be significant. And it was. So good that Rahm is returning to a Tour transformed from its new schedule that is more Happy Gilmore than A Tradition Unlike any other. Can't wait till next April when they announce, now on tee \"Jon Rahm!\"

The news that John Rahm is going to pay a $250 M penalty to rteturn to the PGA Tour has many puting LIV on the clock. Ther sheiks are pulling the plug on their creation and the formats havve not taken the imaginastion of the public. That's a far cry from Jauary of 2022 when LIV was the future and the PGA Tour was road kill. Here's how we saw their entry into big time golf .

Has Saudi Arabia become the 2020s version of South Africa for sports? Back in the 1970s and 80s organized sports helped head the drive to isolate the apartheid regime in South Africa. Despite the offers of huge amounts of money (for the day) most establishment sports figures said no, leaving South Africa alone in its racist policy.

There are now the rumblings about the same shunning of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his ruling family over their politics in the region. Specifically the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 has been seen by many as typical of the regime’s cruelty. There is no doubt that the murder was bloodthirsty and arrogant. No one deserves to die that way.

Here’s how we saw the murder in our 2018 column “He May Be An SOB But He’s Our SOB: “Well, the Saudis and their latest omnipotent leader appear to have made the mistake of killing someone who frequented the same DC dining salons as the American national press and political establishment. Some broke flatbread with him in his capacity as a columnist for WaPo. He was pals with prominent reporters.

Thus, we have a fury unseen for at least a fortnight over a guy who, though he didn’t deserve to be butchered with bone saws, was something short of Jimmy Olsen, boy reporter: Nephew of arms dealer Anan Khashoggi, cousin of ill-fated Princess Di consort Dodi Fayed, dabbler in the Muslim Brotherhood propaganda, estranged pal of the current Saudi Royal family, supporter of the Turkish-Qatari axis, friend of disaffected princes and the anti-Saudi elements of the American elite.”

As the expression goes, anyone who thinks they understand Saudi Arabia and the Middle East doesn’t understand Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. But it seems that Khashoggi will nonetheless be the poster boy for the disquiet felt by celebrities such as Lewis Hamilton about a 14th century Islamic fiefdom— with more money that God— upsetting the sports apple cart.

As evidence, NBC Golf Channel hosts this week got in high dudgeon over a golf tournament the Saudis are running opposite the legendary AT&T Pebble Beach Classic in February. As is their wont the Saudis are paying so much in appearance fees that a large number of top Tour pros is headed there. Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson are among the players to have committed to playing in what organizers hope will be a World Golf Tour.

Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner and Eamon Lynch likened the players to those who took money to appear in Sun City in the 1970s. Kashoggi’s publisher The Washington Post got straight the point. “There’s no disguising the fact that it’s blood money.”

But Jordan Spieth thinks the competition will push the Tour . "I think as a player overall it will benefit in that I think that the changes that have come from the PGA Tour have been modernized in a way that may or may not have come about if it weren't there,” he told Sky Sports.

The only certainty in 2022 was that the financial benefits for player would be significant. And it was. So good that Rahm is returning to a Tour transformed from its new schedule that is more Happy Gilmore than A Tradition Unlike any other. Can't wait till next April when they announce, now on tee "Jon Rahm!"