Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy should demand PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan to resign

Forget Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the value of eighth grade geometry, telling your kids the value of money is one of the saddest realities for a parent.

As Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters once wrote, “Money, So they say, Is the root of all evil today.”

Sorry, kids.

On Tuesday morning, money won, again, when the PGA Tour announced its partnership with LIV Golf.

Somewhere Greg Norman set fire to a $100 bill to light his cigar with Phil Mickelson and someone named Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

Somewhere Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm closed their eyes, while quietly cursing the name, “Jay Monahan.”

The most interesting story in golf over the last year has been the fight between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed startup LIV Golf league.

The fallout affected PGA Tour players, CBS, all major sports TV networks, the Masters, the PGA, the British Open right down to two entities in Fort Worth: The Charles Schwab Challenge, and Escalante Golf, a boutique company based in Fort Worth that owns multiple courses used for LIV Golf events.

The PGA Tour announced it will unify with LIV Golf and the DP World Tour to serve as one umbrella for pro golf.

Imagine Pablo Escobar funding a professional sports league; that’s what the PGA Tour just signed off on.

Golf’s War of the Roses is over, but this bitter battle resulted not in a divorce rather a marriage. Somehow all of these enemies are now best friends.

Why?

Money.

How?

Money.

Millions and millions of it.

The particulars will be sorted out over the coming months, as the 2023 LIV schedule will play out before its eventual death.

The blacklisted LIV players will again play PGA Tour events, and the successful sports washing of the Saudi Arabian PIF fund will continue.

The PGA Tour, and its leader Jay Monahan, have no choice but to admit that what Dustin Johnson, Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and the rest of the LIV players did last year was right. Taking the money, no matter how dirty, was right.

It was never about morality. It was never about some invisible code of ethics that one side abides by whereas the other does not.

It’s not about charity, which the PGA Tour technically is as a 501 c3 for tax purposes.

It’s not about “bringing people together,” as Saudi Arabia’s sports minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal, told 60 Minutes earlier this year.

This is just about money.

The Saudi’s are motivated to diversify their PIF fund away from just oil; the PGA Tour is motivated by having access to that pool of money which is deeper than Saudi Arabia’s oil fields.

This is why former President Donald Trump brazenly associates with the Saudis, just the same as most U.S. Presidents have since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Once the Saudis discovered its monster oil field in 1938, and then bullied the global market in 1973, the resulting wealth allowed a country of 36 million to turn super power nations into starving third-world children.

Why?

Money.

How?

Money.

Even the PGA Tour and its fleet of six and seven figure employees and players don’t have enough of it.

The amount of tone-deaf whining from all parties involved is insulting, a by product of entitlement that the 99 percenters can’t fathom.

How any active PGA Tour player can sit in the same room as Monahan without throwing a cup of hot spit in his face is a lesson in restraint.

The likes of Jon Rahm, Rory and the rest all fiercely pitched the PGA Tour line; they condemned the decisions by their “ex friends” who went to LIV, and were just gelded by their leader.

No one did right by Jay Monahan more than Rory McIlroy, and Tiger Woods; they were both made to look a fool by what amounts to a country club executive vice president whose Tour will now have no problem taking money from a fund controlled by a group of men who treat human rights like a speed limit.

Seldom has a leader in sports ever looked any weaker than Jay Monahan. Seldom has a leader reeked of hypocrisy more than Jay Monahan.

“I understand the criticism,” Monahan told the Associated Press after the announcement. “For me, you take the information you have at the time and make decisions in the best interests. Things have changed. This was the right time to have this conversation.”

Wonder if Mr. Monahan’s annual compensation package changes in light of the PGA Tour’s decision?

The “conversation” likely included a lot of lawyers, and legal fees as LIV had the PGA Tour in court over alleged anti-trust. Major sports leagues are occasionally threatened with anti-trust cases, and they always win.

Check that. The NFL was sued by the USFL in 1986 for anti-trust violations. The USFL won the case, and was awarded $1. The man behind the USFL’s suit? Future President Donald J. Trump, who currently owns three of the courses on the 2023 LIV schedule.

LIV Golf was going nowhere. It had no national TV contract that generated revenue, or major sponsorship; other than maybe three names the league offered little.

What it has is access to the money that Dustin, The Shark and Phil all grabbed. Now the PGA Tour has, too.

Kids, it would be nice if the world operated differently, but as Roger Waters wrote:

“Money.

“It’s a gas.

“Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.”