The ghastly sight that is the ‘bankerisation’ of golf
Radix malorum est cupiditas is a Biblical phrase (1 Timothy 6:10) that we can, with accuracy and no embarrassment, apply to the sorry spectacle that is top-level men’s professional golf these days. Before, dear reader, you scramble for your well-thumbed King James Bible to discover the English translation, let me save you the effort. It means: “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”
In quoting this phrase and applying it to men’s professional golf I am by no means singling out for criticism Jon Rahm, let alone Cam Smith or Louis Oosthuizen, both of whom play golf in a way I deeply admire (and both are Open champions on the Old Course). Instead, I’m trying to stand back to gain a broader perspective and ask myself this question: how and why did this ghastly mess come about?
Many have suggested it began when the PGA Tour decided to extend its playing season in 2013 to what was called the “wraparound season”. This had the effect of wrapping a plastic bag over the heads of other professional tours – particularly in the southern hemisphere – and suffocating them. Any notion of even a semi-world tour wherein the best players would regularly compete for big prizemoney outside the United States was squashed like an insect under a heavy boot. The PGA Tour gave in to greed, and eventually LIV Golf was born.
I don’t mean to lapse into crude, ludicrous anti-Americanism. I have a son born in America, and I’m an enthusiastic if amateur scholar of the US Constitution, the finest legal document since Magna Carta. My favourite music is bluegrass.
Going back over the past century there has always been rivalry between American players and players from Britain, Europe, the Commonwealth countries such as South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, and to some extent players from Asia. Where lead by the great American gentlemen players such as Jones, Nicklaus, Palmer and Crenshaw, this rivalry was respectful and friendly. Moreover, such men shared an appreciation for golf across the world, and they saw their profession as including a duty to play in many different countries. My father was of this generation and practised the duty of appearing in far-flung places with great pleasure.
It earned the profession respect. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that professional golfers were not allowed in many clubhouses.
Prizemoney earnings were always important, yes, as were sponsorships, but there was a certain decorum among the leading players and in the entire profession that these days is fading away, if not almost lost.
Where and how has this palpable greed come from? It may be a controversial view, but I look back to the 1980s when financial markets were radically deregulated in the US, in Britain and then in Australia. Some of this deregulation was healthy: floating the Australian dollar was a sensible measure by the Hawke Government. As was cutting tariffs on imports. But through the 1990s and into this century there arose the cult of the investment bankers, the masters of the universe who made millions from manipulating pieces of paper – valuable securities. Eventually, of course, the tail began to wag the dog as high finance dominated our economies.
This has led to the ghastly sight of the ‘bankerisation’ of golf. Instead of heroic play on exceptional golf courses, the discourse now includes talk of equity, valuable franchises and social-media rewards. The spectacle of faceless investment bankers negotiating in secret the future of organised tournament schedules is truly sickening.
The involvement of lawyers in professional golf is almost as disgusting. When I read of players being suspended not for personal misconduct but for exercising their right to choose where to play a tournament, I wondered where the notion of a professional golfer as a free and respected individual sportsman had gone.
I don’t blame the LIV golfers for making a free choice, even if the sums of money involved were confronting. That said, Shohei Ohtani, a young Japanese baseball player – probably the world’s best right now – just moved to the LA Dodgers for an astonishing amount of money. I don’t enjoy the LIV format, but others apparently do. What is more worrying is the bankerisation of golf and the suffocation of tours outside the United States and the LIV tour.
It’s a pity that notion of generosity and sharing has been bankerised out of existence by the masters of the universe in Ponte Vedra and Riyadh.
Complaining, of course, is easy. What to do about this poisonous imperialism? The answer is this: win. Australia has an excellent cohort of young men and women players. The more they win in the big events, the more it will become obvious that top-level golf has a natural home in Australia. There is a role to play for Australia’s hugely wealthy companies and banks as sponsors, but the empires of the bankers cannot ignore sheer talent. Beauty of play will defeat greed in the end.
Getty images: Cliff Hawkins
