Almost every golfer has a price, and an eye on England

So this was it, the PGA Tour’s long-awaited drop of the hammer on defectors run afoul of laws by taking massive paydays from the fledgling however Saudi-funded LIV Golf collection.

Not lengthy after the breakaway tour launched its first tee balls exterior London, England, on Thursday, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan despatched an open letter to tour members containing a easy message. The breakaway gamers are suspended, and due to this fact now not welcome to play on the PGA Tour and its associates. Anybody who dares comply with of their oil-money-drenched footsteps will likely be equally banished.

“These gamers have made their selection for their very own financial-based causes. However they’ll’t demand the identical PGA Tour membership advantages, concerns, alternatives and platform as you,” Monahan wrote. “That expectation disrespects you, our followers and our companions.”

Actually the pan-Atlantic saga of golf’s two solitudes is taking severe shine off the primary version of the RBC Canadian Open since 2019, at St. George’s Golf and Nation Membership, the place the battle between first-round chief Wyndham Clark and the remainder of a star-studded subject, together with prime Canadian MacKenzie Hughes, whose four-under-par 66 put him three photographs behind Clark’s opening-round-best 63 — was by far the secondary storyline to the continuing téte-à-téte between the PGA Tour and golf’s Saudi-backed disrupter.

Suspensions could have enamel, though court docket challenges determine to comply with, however right here’s the reality: There’s no method Monahan can say for certain if his imposing of self-discipline will do something to close the door on an extra exodus. As a result of a day after Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed added their names to the record LIV Golf signees — a roster that already contains Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia — it definitely appears like extra defectors are an inevitability. Thursday noticed a LIV Golf promotional video embody a fast lower of PGA Tour gamers Matthew Wolff and Bubba Watson, neither of whom has but introduced a leap. Whether or not their inclusion was an error or an omen, time will inform.

And therein lies the issue for the PGA Tour. It doesn’t essentially matter that the Saudi-backed enterprise is, on this week’s iteration, a skinny concoction out there on YouTube made up of has-beens and never-will-bes that pales compared to what’s being featured in Etobicoke, the place 5 of the highest 10 gamers on this planet are in attendance. It doesn’t matter that an excellent argument will be made that the gamers accepting LIV Golf’s money are abetting a Saudi regime’s morally corrupt efforts to sportwash the rightly tarnished worldwide picture of its oppressive regime. It doesn’t matter that each LIV press convention appears to show right into a calamity of awkward pauses and banished journalists.

It solely issues that the Saudis have one thing necessary in huge portions — cash — which occurs to be the very factor that will get professional golfers away from bed within the morning. It solely issues that they’re handing out in a kind that’s lengthy been taboo on the PGA Tour: As a assured sum untied to efficiency.

As a result of as even world No. 6 Justin Thomas acknowledged after his opening-round 69 at St. George’s on Thursday: Virtually everyone has a value.

“I don’t care what you say. Folks play for various causes. It doesn’t matter who you might be or what it’s. Every part has a quantity,” Thomas mentioned. “(LIV Golf is) reaching that quantity for some folks. And I hope that they don’t get others. However I feel {that a} very robust core group of us (on the PGA Tour) could be very secure and agency in our place. And I hope it stays that method.”

The one sincere reply to the query, “What are the percentages there’ll be extra defections?” is the reply Thomas gave on Thursday.

“You don’t know,” he mentioned. “They’re clearly throwing a lot cash at people who it’s very exhausting to show down.”

It’s very exhausting to show down even when, because it sits, the LIV Golf Collection is so much more the butt of jokes than the envy of the game. On Thursday Phil Mickelson, as if to embrace his function because the ringleader of the villainous defectors, after taking a reported $200 million to affix, performed wearing all black and freed from the industry-standard speckling of company logos. If it was, partially, Mickelson’s signature trend desire, it was additionally an simple acknowledgment that Mickelson’s as soon as beefy roster of sponsors have deserted him since he crudely rationalized his dealings with the Saudis.

Possibly that doesn’t matter when this week’s LIV Golf prize pool totals $25 million, with $4.4 million going to the winner. No marvel the gamers sticking it out at St. George’s, the place a measly $8.7 million is up for grabs, with the winner due $1.56 million, appeared to endorse Monahan’s suspensions.

“I’m happy,” Thomas mentioned. “Like I’ve mentioned the entire time, I’ve nice perception and nice confidence within the PGA Tour, and the place we’re going and the place we’re persevering with to develop to. And people guys simply aren’t going to be part of it.”

Whether or not or not that’ll make for awkward reunions at subsequent week’s U.S. Open in Brookline, Mass., the place america Golf Affiliation has mentioned eligible Saudi-league gamers will likely be free to tee it up, Thomas mentioned he’s anticipating as a lot.

“I do know once I noticed (Johnson) final week I had no concept what to say, if it was, like, a ‘Congrats,’ or a ‘Bye,’ or what it was,” Thomas mentioned. “I feel we’re all grown-ups and all of us perceive there’s going to be some guys you may in all probability make some jokes to, and a few guys you in all probability want to go away it alone.”

For all of the head-nodding from Canadian Open opponents in regards to the Tour’s dropping of Thursday’s hammer, Rory McIlroy acknowledged he’d nonetheless spend a while watching the goings on exterior London.

“Yeah, in fact I’ll watch it, and see what all of the fuss is about,” McIlroy mentioned.

In different phrases, as a lot because it was simple sufficient to snicker on the absurdity of LIV Golf’s ramshackle subject and its hokey workforce idea — “I’m definitely not going out to purchase any workforce merchandise anytime quickly,’ McIlroy joked — the simple mirth received’t change the mathematics.

The Saudis have cash, the very stuff professional golfers play for. They usually’re nicely conscious nearly everyone has a value.

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