PGA Tour sweating over McIlroy and his price after Rahm’s mega-money LIV exit
What price Rory McIlroy? It is a question LIV Golf’s Saudi backers must be legitimately pondering having snared the supposedly unsnarable Jon Rahm.
McIlroy, as the voice of the PGA Tour for most of the LIV conflict, is universally viewed as untouchable, out of range whatever the number.
But the same was thought about his European Ryder Cup teammate.
If this week’s bombshell Rahm defection has proven one thing about golf’s unstable plate tectonics, it is never to rule out anything.
LIV, drifting into irrelevance and seemingly ripe to be mothballed, is suddenly back front and centre – and with a cast-iron A-lister on board after the staggering £450m swoop.
The deep pockets of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – with their Hermione’s handbag design structure – can turn pledges of loyalty to confetti.
There has been no more staunch loyalist to the establishment than McIlroy.
But he has mellowed in his criticism of those who have taken the LIV shilling and was notably supportive of Rahm’s right to choose whatever he thought was best for him in the wake of this week’s announcement.
After being the PGA Tour’s player voice for so long, McIlroy quietly quit its board last month. The official explanation – that it was taking too much of his time – was accurate up to a point but where McIlroy had come around to the conclusion that golf would be better off with the PIF inside the tent as part of the solution, he found himself outnumbered by more hawkish voices around the PGA Tour table.
Those parties include one Tiger Woods.
In stepping down after five years, McIlroy came to the conclusion that Woods’s voice would be the one that carried furthest.
Woods holds little truck with a US sporting institution getting into bed with the sovereign wealth fund of a Gulf oil state as the PGA Tour pledged to do in signing a framework agreement to join forces back in June.
He wants the PGA Tour to pivot towards the American investor groups who have expressed an interest in an alternative Stars and Stripes-coloured collaboration. They include Liverpool’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, and Eldridge Industries which is the holding company of Chelsea’s Todd Boehly.
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That was the way the water appeared to be flowing as the mutually agreed deadline of December 31 to sign an all-encompassing deal with PIF approached – so the Saudis exploded the Rahm bomb.
Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, and PIF chairman Yasir Al-Rummayan are due to meet face to face this week. The message from the Saudis to Monahan ahead of that meeting could not be clearer. Deliver on your commitment to let us in or we will flex our financial muscle, arm LIV to the hilt and strip you bare.
It is gunboat diplomacy designed to let Monahan know just who they are playing ball with.
Rahm has understandably been the centre of attention but to concentrate entirely upon him is to miss the point – he is merely a lavishly-remunerated pawn in a much bigger game.
Actually pawn status is probably underselling Rahm’s value – he is more of a bishop – but if McIlroy could be turned too, well that would be the queen taken as far as LIV are concerned.
There are obvious challenges in such an attempt. He is on record in the past as saying that he wished LIV Golf would just go away. Besides anything else McIlroy does not enjoy the comfort blanket of a five-year exemption status into the Majors that the Spaniard carries from his Masters triumph.
But Rahm’s switch has applied a twist to the golf kaleidoscope which will make every other player think. If a 29-year-old at the peak of his considerable powers is happy to take the plunge, why not me?
That is three of the last five Major champions on board now.
LIV Golf may still be backwater in terms of global attention but it is no longer a retirement retreat for fading PGA and DP World Tour players.
If the question was asked of McIlroy, you would still expect him to say no.
But 100 per cent definitely? After Rahm, no-one can say so with absolute certainty now.
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Good week – Kevin Sinfield
The England rugby union defence coach put himself through hell in completing seven ultramarathons in seven days.
All the pain was worth it as the donations passed his £777,777 fund-raising target and headed on towards the £1m mark.
Sinfield’s love for his MND-hit former teammate Rob Burrow and his commitment to raising the money to help fund the research that finds a cure for this awful disease knows no bounds.
In all Sinfield has raised more than £8m for MND charities from his heroic exertions.
There are few more inspiring figures in professional sport.
The New Year’s Honours’ list is approaching and if the likes of Gavin Williamson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are deemed worthy of knighthoods, the time for Sir Kev to arise is surely overdue.
Bad week – Paris Olympics
The IOC’s decision to allow Russian athletes to compete at next summer’s Games guaranteed a curtain of controversy will be drawn across sport’s greatest gathering.
The Russians may be competing as neutrals but the kudos their successes will bring to Vladmir Putin’s warmongering regime will not be diminished by a flag of convenience.
The position this puts Ukraine in is intolerable.
Boycotting the Games in protest would deny the Ukrainian people the opportunity of some momentary respite and escape from the grim reality.
But if Ukraine is at the Olympics the chances are that now some of their athletes will have to compete against Russians.
How will that sit when more than 350 Ukrainian athletes, coaches and support staff have been killed defending their country since Russia launched its invasion 20 months ago?
IOC president Thomas Bach should hang his head in shame.
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