Over the last two years there have been numerous words and phrases I have tried to delete from my vocabulary after hearing them day in and day out. There are more options in the English language than these exhaustingly tedious phrases.
“Unprecedented.” How thankful I am that I no longer have to hear that phrase every day. If I had a beer for every time I heard that, I would be a long time on the waiting list for a liver transplant.
Once the height of the pandemic past and the LIV Golf controversy started to gather pace, my teeth began to grind over the use of the phrase “grow the game.” Yuck. In fairness to the golfers who are playing the LIV Tour, they have stopped using that but now the new expression is “I am a golfer, not a politician,” or other versions of the phrase.
I am not a politician, in fact, I have minimal interest in politics which as a 24-year-old might come as a bit of a surprise (and disappointment to my mother) given I am the prime age of the woke generation but sure look. However, I know what is right and what is wrong. Human rights is not a political issue. It is a human issue, hence the term.
This lazy term that has been brandished out over the last few months has reared its ugly head during the LIV press conferences in the Centurion.
Credit must go to Sky Sports golf correspondent Jamie Weir for his labelling of the money as “murderous” because that’s exactly what it is.
It is greed in its most brutal form and it is sports-washing in its most blatant form. I cannot believe Graeme McDowell said Saudi was using the game of golf to get where they want to be and that he and others are proud to help. Is there a brain cell among any of these lads? Or are the piles upon piles of money clogging up their heads? Tone-deaf only scrapes the surface.
McDowell talked about being a role model for children. He’s as much a role model for children as I am a professional golfer.
GMac should have just said he doesn’t give a damn about the human atrocities in Saudi Arabia. Instead of this waffle that you’re trying to be this best version of yourself and be some sort of activist, just admit that you’re there for an obnoxious payday.
The size of the ego of this man. A player who has been finished for years as a competitive force on the PGA Tour and to dangle the Ryder Cup over both tours was pathetic. No European in that field should be on the next Ryder Cup team, LIV or no LIV. Has beens.
Martin Kaymer holed arguably the most famous putt in the history of the Ryder Cup, if not golf, and I know he is aware of where the money is coming from but he couldn’t give a rats.
At least Dustin Johnson was honest! They’re all clearly going for the money, just admit it. you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Pressure must come from the PGA and DP World Tours. When are they going to clamp down? Otherwise these players might just get everything they’re chasing. Can the DP World Tour really afford to issue blanket bans on their players for joining LIV? It’s a catch-22 situation.
Issuing fines won’t do anything, there needs to be bans from major championships, Ryder Cups, all PGA and DP World Tour events. But even at that, if I was getting $200 million just to puck a small white ball around a field, would I care that much?
I find it beautifully ironic that while these clowns think they are “growing the game”, there is a tournament on the DP World Tour this week that is actually growing the game in the form of the “Scandinavian Mixed” that pits the men and women in the same tournament, same field, competing for equal prize money.
Hundreds of people flocked to the fairways of Baltray on Monday to watch the final round of the East of Ireland Championship. That’s growing the game from the bottom up and personally it is golf that I find much more appealing and compelling to watch than the professional game a lot of the time.
Three weeks ago Rory McIlroy said LIV will shape the future of the professional game one way or another and by Tuesday of this wee,k we had three resignations from Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia and the fella who walks in the putts. Meanwhile, Tiger was offered a nine-figure sum to come and play.
LIV is quickly growing legs. I just hope they snap in two.
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