Golf Update

Since I know my 2 1/2 readers are all big golf fans I don't have to tell you that the U.S. Open champion is a British guy who was previously little known on this side of the pond, although he did win a U.S. amateur championship some years ago and has been successful on the European tour. The tournament was mildly interesting to me because it took place near my former home in Jamaica Plain and I used to drive by the site often on my way to Brookline and points west.

 

Anyway, you couldn't care less about any of that. But what is actually interesting is that mass murderer, torturer and tyrant Mohammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, decided to found an alternative golf tour in order to legitimize his crimes against humanity. The idea was to dump vast millions of dollars onto PGA and European tour stars to entice them to defect. Then golf fans would watch their faves on the new so-called LIV tour and they'd think MbS was cool for making it happen, apparently, or at least he must be an okay guy if Phil Mickelson says so.

Mickelson is indeed the biggest "star" MbS managed to entice. He said that mass murder and human rights violations aren't his problem, he was joining the LIV tour to force the PGA to make "reforms." I'll tell you exactly what "reforms" Mickelson has in mind. In case you didn't know, the way professional golf has worked from time immemorial is that standard tournaments last four days. The 70 or so players with the best scores on Thursday and Friday "make the cut"and get to play on the weekend for prize money. The rest go home with bupkis. 

Mickelson's problem is that he can't make cuts any more and he thinks he deserves to get paid just for showing up. He's over 50 so he could play on the senior tour, which doesn't have cuts and he'd be more competitive anyway, but the prize money isn't as much as he thinks he deserves. Mickelson has always been about money and nothing but money. In 2016 he was accused of insider trading, and he got a sweetheart deal from the SEC in which he wasn't criminally charged, but he had to give back almost a million dollars in illicit gains. In 2013, he complained that he had to pay taxes on his income -- he claimed he paid 63%, but that was a lie. And BTW, his income that year was more than $40 million. MbS is apparently paying him something on that order just for existing.

Why is not paying taxes the most important thing in the world to billionaires? I can't answer that. I can say that the U.S. Open is sponsored by the U.S. Golf Association, not the PGA, so they allowed the LIV traitors, including Mickelson, to play. The golf world was abuzz with the prospect that the championship might come down to a duel between a defector and a loyalist, and of course since Mickelson is for some mysterious reason popular among golf fans, the cameras followed him obsessively on Thursday and Friday. (As you know, I've been sick, so I watched a bit.) 

Here's the good news. Cardboard asshole Phil Mickelson was utterly humiliated. He played like a weekend duffer and wound up 14 over par on Friday. Of 14 LIVers who entered, only 3 made the cut and none of them played well on the weekend or got anywhere near the leaderboard. The entire raison d'etre of the LIV tour, from the standpoint of the players, is to dump millions of dollars into the pockets of has beens and never wases, guys who can't make a living on the PGA tour and think they're entitled to "reforms" that will pay them millions of dollars even though they can't play. Good luck with that.