Lynch: Shocking! LIV consultant encourages Saudis to keep shoveling cash in the furnace
Lynch: Shocking! LIV consultant encourages Saudis to keep shoveling cash in the furnace
A year ago, Michael Klein was one of several sports industry rainmakers who refused to discuss their work on LIV Golf for Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund before a U.S. Senate committee, citing the threat of a 20-year prison term for violating the Kingdom's confidentiality laws. He was less taciturn at this week's CAA World Congress of Sports conference in Nashville, where no oaths were administered.
Klein insisted the Saudis wanted partnership rather than competition with the PGA Tour, a calculable revisionism that ignores LIV's goal of having the best players on every tour funneled its way. He then bemoaned 'badly advised complexities' that hampered the league's development, a delightful sideswipe that was surely noticed at the agency formerly known as Performance54, which has profited handsomely from driving LIV since its inception. (He didn't specify which complexities were badly advised, presumably out of respect for the attention span of his audience.)
'They'll continue to invest in LIV as a separate entity or as a partner with PGA, either way,' Klein said of his PIF client. 'They've made a substantial investment believing in the growth in golf, which I happen to think is smart, and the growth in team golf, which is smart, and the long-term viability of a constructive relationship with the PGA.'
'I believe there will be a constructive relationship,' he added.
On that point, Klein might be right. Sure, it's almost impossible to find anyone optimistic that a PGA Tour-PIF deal will be consummated, but cold cash has a way of thawing even the deepest chill. Still, Klein's claim that team golf is a smart bet seems audacious when LIV's own figures show it's more than $5 billion in the red with little to show for it beyond sponsorship by Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers (that being the commercial highlight announced during LIV's season debut in the U.S. earlier this month).
If PIF chief Yasir Al-Rumayyan heeds the counsel of his consultants, he'll continue to torch money while ignoring the reality that his pet project is more of a smoking ruin than a shining city on a hill. No one in Al-Rumayyan's circle is willing to tell the emperor — or in this case, His Excellency — that he's wearing no clothes, that his presumption of fan and financial support for team golf has proven fanciful. As one golf executive involved in the process pithily put it via text message: 'No one has the balls.'
Nor, a cynic might note, the incentive. Not as long as the fees keep flowing.
Outside of the Ryder Cup, team golf is nothing more than a palate cleanser in the men's professional game. Take this week's Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the PGA Tour's only team event. The format features foursomes and fourball action, which resembles actual team play more than anything offered by LIV, which merely collects individual scores and presents them as team totals. But even there, the focus isn't really on the competitive merits of two-man teams.
'It's just a fun different experience this week.' — Luke Donald.
'It'll be a little kind of family-friendly week.' — Camilo Villegas.
'A fun week for us.' — Taylor Moore.
'Everyone probably says the same thing, but it's really the funnest week probably for any of us the whole year… It's nice to switch things up and be a little more lighthearted.' — Wyndham Clark.
The winners get a nice check and FedEx Cup points, but that's how they talk about the member-guest at home. Even commissioner Jay Monahan didn't attempt to present the tournament as anything more than it is. 'To be able to play in a different format for that one week and to do so in a highly competitive but a fun atmosphere I think has just differentiated this event,' he said.
That's what team golf amounts to at the elite level — a crafty move by an imaginative sponsor to distinguish its stop from all the others and a chill interlude for players at the right time in the schedule, but certainly not a template other sponsors have sought to copy nor one the players have encouraged. Thus, it happens one week a year and TGL is early-week entertainment in winter. Team golf is a diversion, not a core component, and certainly not something to be shoehorned into the schedule to assuage the pride of Al-Rumayyan and his well-compensated hangers-on.
LIV wagered everything on gimmickry and lost, and the caterwauling of its online incels won't change that reality. If the product had any appeal other than cash, there'd be a credible advocate for its continued existence who doesn't collect payment for his backing. But it doesn't, so there isn't.
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