Money talks

 Congratulations to the PGA Tour, which is now in bed with the very scum it's spent the last year getting all high and mighty about. Congratulations, too, for giving a heads-up (Not!) to the players who left millions on the table to follow what they believed were their organization's principles. 

Y'all are special. And I mean that in the snarkiest and most sarcastic way possible.

I don't know what this pal-sy deal with the Saudis is going to look like, but I do know what it looks like today. It looks like the Saudis threw a wad of blood money at the PGA to save their floundering Gimmick Golf Tour, and the PGA decided, well, um ... hmm ... maybe these guys aren't so bad after all.

Maybe that's not exactly how it went down. Maybe PGA pasha Jay Monahan was sincere, if delusional, when he sold this as the best way forward for golf, and that's the only reason the PGA did this. The Saudis and the LIV defectors -- Phil Mickelson chief among them -- sure seemed to think so, having hitched their wagon to a novelty act and now get to walk back into real golf with no questions asked.

The way things were going, they'd have been cashing those chunky paychecks in a void. Turns out 54-hole no-cut "tournaments" in which everyone gets paid beaucoup no matter how poorly they play is not what the golfing public wanted. Why else would the CW be the only TV deal the LIV could scare up?

LIV golf, "Riverdale" and "Nancy Drew." Only on the CW!

In any event, this sure looks like the Saudis used their wealth to cut a deal with the PGA and European tours, and by "cut a deal" I mean "bought a lifeboat." Problem is, they cooked up the LIV Tour to begin with to sportswash their execrable human rights record, which includes chopping a Washington Post journalist into little pieces with the apparent approval of the royal family.

The same royal family, by the way, that controls the sovereign wealth fund with which PGA just decided to do business. As a friend and former of colleague of mine put it on social media, succinctly and accurately: "They sportswashed the PGA. Wow."

And to spring all this on your membership with no warning?

That membership is pissed and should be, because it's the worst kind of betrayal. They let Monahan have it at a players meeting yesterday, calling him a "hypocrite" more than once. It was an accusation Monahan conspicuously didn't even try to refute.

After all, how could he?