In those vexed times in 2022, when LIV Golf turned up and Greg Norman was grilled about the hit squad which dismembered Jamal Khashoggi, and media thundered about Saudi “blood money” and “sportswashing”, and all the rest, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan declared, “We are at war.”

And there followed a mighty stoush among rich swinging dicks, as Monahan took the fight to the U.S Congress, and Norman fronted Senate hearings, and the PGA Tour fought to maintain its global hegemony and the primacy of its never-ending season of professional tournaments, which sucked in the world’s best players by dint of having all the money.
And it was all quite the to-do. 

For no longer did America have all the cash. Genuine God Money had shown up in the form of Saudi Arabia’s trillion-dollar Public Investment Fund, the petrol-funded mega-advanced savings account that created Uber and those weird desert cities, and which has thrown a billion a year at LIV Golf like seed money for a startup.

Monahan and co. would not give up without a righteous fight, of course. The nascent LIV league was derided as pointless and an exhibition by the same people who’ve been relatively silent on The Golf League, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods’ hybrid, indoor-outdoor, virtual-actual, teams golf competition thing which was fomented, one could assume, because Tiger and Rors had nothing else on and felt like a little world-shaping on a whim.

In our part of the world, Australians, as it was in the Super League War and World Series Cricket, were compelled to choose a side. It was culture war stuff. Nuance be buggered. Pick a side! There is no grey! Choose, you bastards! Choose!

But it didn’t matter who we backed, really, for we didn’t have a lot of skin in the game. And, as the big dogs slugged it out, and continue to slug it out, for such are the Lotto numbers of money and by dint of that power, little Australia has been left to sniff the wind and do our best. And we have, as ever, boxed above our weight.

Would you be entertained ... if Brooks Koepka turned up for the PGA at RQ? Probably you would, yes. PHOTO: Getty Images

Australia is seen from afar, tucked as we are down here in the South Pacific, as an anomaly. Yes, we have disproportionate players on the PGA Tour. But in terms of our own tour, we’re barely a rounding error in the bank accounts of those Fenway Sports Group strategists who’ve funded PGA Tour Enterprises, who’ve given players equity, and who fought the good fight for Monahan and Tiger and Patrick Cantlay, who it’s estimated is worth $US24 million but still wants to be paid to play in the Ryder Cup.

And breathe.

With Monahan circling wagons, Australia was asked to stay “loyal”. And we did, after a fashion, maintaining ties with the DP Word Tour and by extension the PGA Tour. As a sweetener for staying within the establishment’s tent – what some posit as “loyalty”, others maintain was ridiculously naïve, again there is little grey – there was talk of bringing a Korn Ferry Tour event to Australia. As a mate from golf said: “Beauty – reserve grade Seppos.” 

Further common themes can be found by tooling about on Twitter, chatting with colleagues in various forums, or swapping knowledge with tables of brainiacs in the back bar at the club. One Accepted Wisdom goes that Norman and the Sheiks may have offered Australian golf substantially more. That alignment with the Asian Tour would have made more sense. That we’ve hitched our caboose to the wrong Bullet Train.

For one, we’re closer to Jakarta than Dublin – in Ireland or Ohio. For two, all that money! The coin floating around Asia, courtesy of the Saudis’ super-fund, means tournaments in Oman, Hong Kong and the outskirts of Bangkok are worth $US2 million. And why would our Australian tour not have us some of that?

Align with Asia, it is reasoned, and we could get cosy with LIV Golf and its stars. And our Australian Open and PGA Championship could become “International Series” events, and LIV Golf’s world-famous superstars, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm, U.S Open champion and oddfellow, Bryson DeChambeau, would add their star power to our “major” championships, as they do for LIV’s annual booze-fest in Adelaide.

Put all this sexy manoeuvring and political intrigue to PGA of Australia chief Gavin Kirkman, and, in reasonable, modulated tones, he’ll explain where Australian golf sits in global golf ecosystem (hint: the DP World Tour, which has events in Asia and the country of Australia).

Click here for Part Two. You could also grab the December issue of our magazine. Subscribe and/or give the gift of Christmas here.