Lynch: Finally, a reason to cheer for the Saudis: they’re taking Sergio Garcia!


Somewhere deep in the LIV Golf budget, far below the lucrative prize funds and exorbitant tips to overlook the free, closer to the paltry media buys to induce velvety coverage, there should be a line item for the diaper changing facilities. used by the increasingly sick or surely children who will occupy their changing rooms.

Take Sergio Garcia as an example (“please,” says Henny Youngman). Garcia is not quite a one-dimensional dipstick. He can be kind and funny at times, but even at 42, he’s proof that age and maturity are mutually exclusive. In the first round of Thursday’s Wells Fargo championship, he again demonstrated his tendency to process every inconvenience as an injustice.

After being informed, incorrectly, it turned out later, by a PGA Tour rules official that he had run out of allotted time to find his ball in a hazard, Garcia broke. “I can’t wait to get off this tour,” he announced. “I can’t wait to get out of here.” He stepped a little further, then added, “In a couple more weeks, I won’t have to deal with you anymore.”

The unlucky official must have felt like a bartender who refuses service to a drunken belligerent only to learn that he is taking his clientele elsewhere.

The departure from the PGA Tour that Garcia referred to is supposed to mean he will play LIV Golf’s Saudi-funded sports wash tournament series, which is set to launch next month in the UK. He didn’t confirm it himself: Garcia avoided the media after his first and second rounds, but his agent acknowledged that he requested the required release from the PGA Tour to play the inaugural Arabia event near London.

Competing there doesn’t necessarily mean a break from the PGA Tour. Several members will go as the Tour long ago set a precedent that allows money to be seized abroad. Playing the second Saudi event from July 1-3 in Portland, Oregon would be a different matter. Tour policy does not allow exemptions for events held in the US Members who defy that rule to play in Portland are explicitly choosing sides. Protracted disciplinary action and litigation would likely follow.

Garcia reviews all the common traits among players associated with the Saudi bid to hijack pro golf: The best days are in the rearview mirror, he’s accomplished everything that seems likely in major championships, he doesn’t play consistently well enough to benefit of biggest prizes on the PGA Tour. , not popular enough to reap fan engagement bonuses, endowed with a strong sense of entitlement, and consumed by petty (mostly imaginary) complaints.

Since he scissor kicked his way to fame in 1999, Garcia has earned $54 million on the PGA Tour, but his career has been defined by petulance. To cite just a few cases: throwing his shoe in a gallery; spitting into a cup, leaving the loogey for those unlucky groups behind him; bragging to fans (he’d forgive him, the Bethpage galleries were obnoxious); blaming bunker-rakers and unseen forces for his loss at the 2007 Open at Carnoustie; apathetically apologizing for a racist joke about Tiger Woods; being disqualified by the Saudi International in 2019 for intentionally damaging five greens by tomahawking his club.

Let’s dwell on the latter for a moment: His behavior was once considered unacceptable by the Saudis.

Garcia shares another attribute with his peers who are also very fond of bone saw enthusiasts: his absence from the PGA or DP world circuits would hardly be noticed. That is the disconnect at the heart of the Saudi seduction. The sums offered by LIV Golf convince players that they are elite, but the simple fact of considering the opening is an acknowledgment that they are not, that their ability to compete against the best in the world is greatly diminished, that they will change a position Hall of Fame potential. for a secured place in the hall of shame.

There may be a little more respect for honest players who admit to being motivated by money and not concerned with morality. Something, but not much. It’s still relevant what players are willing to do for that money, which is to be puppets on a reprehensible regime’s public relations agenda. But instead of transparency we get heinous misunderstandings when they try to present greed as an act of public service.

In an interview with Sky Sports’ Jamie Weir, Lee Westwood admitted the Saudis have problems – he almost said “problems” before he knew it – but insisted they are trying to improve. He did not detail what he believes those problems are or offer evidence of the government’s progress, which would be news to human rights groups that monitor its abuses. Westwood went on to suggest that the criticism leveled at the Kingdom stems in part from discomfort that the pace of change is too fast.

Whatever compensation plan Westwood has negotiated, one hopes there will be a bonus for his willingness to demean himself in public by shoveling that pot.

It is absurd to think that the future of the PGA or DP World tours would be impoverished by Garcia and Westwood losing to LIV Golf, or any of the others who are considering being complicit in Saudi sports laundering. It could even be considered a positive cleanup of debris. Whoever slips away in the coming weeks, it’s worth noting that both tours created the environment that spawned this situation: the DP World Tour by unabashedly welcoming tin dictatorships to its schedule, and the PGA Tour by operating a state nanny who protects the public image of the players. of the consequences of their behavior, all in service of the Orwellian mantra ‘These guys are good’.

It took the Crown Prince to finally expose the less admirable characters in professional golf. Cynical zealots may want to applaud his willingness to get rid of them.



Reference-golfweek.usatoday.com

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