Do you hear that sound? It’s another finder dragging his pan to the Saudi mountain of cash. But this one feels different and more meaningful, given the growing likelihood that Henrik Stenson will soon complete his passage to Greg Norman’s separatist series.
Unless Keith Pelley, the head of the DP World Tour, can get the best comeback seen in golf since Sunday, the main figures in the game are convinced that Stenson is about to desert and therefore lose. the captaincy of the European Ryder Cup.
Pelley talks to Stenson this week, but the chances of the Swede fulfilling a contract to oversee the 2023 match with the United States are considered terribly light, when an incentive of more than £ 30 million is raised.
European Ryder Cup captain Henrik Stenson looks set to join the LIV series in the coming days
Greg Norman (R) has managed to tempt some big names off the PGA Tour recently
Six-time main winner Phil Mickelson (L) has entered the LIV series with Saudi support
At this point we wonder why. Not in the context of Stenson because we know the answer; the same goes for him as with all the other seals that make the fins and wedges baptize for LIV. But what about them? What about the Saudis? What about a 46-year-old man who fits his plan? A former Open champion, no doubt, and a very good player who was, but in recent seasons in the majors he has acquired enough cuts to make a bonesaw proud.
So he’s not there to push Dustin Johnson. He is not there to fight, win and celebrate the free movement of independent contractors in Norman’s vision. No. Stenson’s goal is strategic, an act of disruption and vindictive destruction; naked aggression in what was already the hostile acquisition of a sport.
The DP World Tour has interpreted it entirely in this way in private. LIV was never here to complement and compete and fit on the sides, to be a tour of many: don’t invest $ 2 billion as an acquisition at the sports tables. For that money, you want the table, the chairs, and probably the rug as well.
To those European fans who signed up: Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey, Graeme McDowell and Martin Kaymer, the stars of the Ryder Cup for a man, how does this potential development sit with his mantra often repeated for “grow the game.” of golf? Make it grow by undermining your best competition? Growing up shooting a torpedo at the event that really lifted them?
British duo Lee Westwood (L) and Ian Poulter (R) have already joined the LIV series
We’ve seen some funny contortions from that band of squirmers lately: Westwood blamed the media last week for a fire that started players was especially bold, but surely, even if only in private, they’ll have to feel a little sorry his new friends take it. so far. They may not, because they have to do “the best” for their families, but this courtship with Stenson is a serious climb.
Interrupting plans around the Ryder Cup will not serve as a victory for LIV, but that seems less its goal at this stage of the coup. So far it’s been about the losses they can impose on the PGA and DP tours – buy a Bryson DeChambeau here, a Brooks Koepka there, a Phil Mickelson, a Johnson and a Patrick Reed.
They could soon include Cameron Smith, the Open winner, and Hideki Matsuyama, last year’s Masters champion. Piece by piece, their game has been to weaken the competition, and they have now dimensioned the space between the two main golf courses and aimed a kick directly at their shared crown jewel.
An interesting point of all this is whether the last scenario will alter public opinion towards the players who took the Saudi money. On this subject, there was a recurring scene over the last few days in St Andrews, in which Poulter walked into the media tent after each round and got in touch with references to how they received him.
The latest big golf winner, Cameron Smith, could also join the LIV series in the near future
The point he said was not a bad one: the boos that were sent to the first tee of his initial loop came from the smallest minority. It wasn’t a widespread protest, no matter how deserving it was, nor was it the uproar of old Tom Morris turning to his grave, as one reporter suggested.
In fact, if anything was revealing, it was that even at the Gulf House, on the occasion of the 150th Open, and amid all the criticism of these pages and others, bettors seemed not to they mattered so much. where golfers earned their money.
But will they do it now? If there’s one thing safe in golf, it’s that people love the Ryder Cup. That it has become part of the power capture should reveal how ugly this saga really is.