Commentary: How a global golf merger symbolises Saudi Arabia’s greater ambitions

SYDNEY: Professional golf - and increasingly world sport - is caught in a sand trap. Not the familiar hazard between fairway and green, but the Middle Eastern desert producing enormous quantities of fossil fuels.

The resulting riches are being diverted into sports, disrupting its traditional Western dominance.

The latest example is the dramatic announcement that LIV Golf, the rebel circuit led by retired Australian golfer Greg Norman and backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has merged with the (US) PGA and (European) DP World Tours after two years of trench warfare.

While today’s big story is LIV Golf, Saudi Arabia’s involvement in sport will generate many more money-driven, politics-heavy headlines.

There are echoes here of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and Rupert Murdoch’s Super (Rugby) League. An aggressive, well-funded competitor takes on the sports establishment, promising to shake up a sclerotic game, bringing in new money and younger fans with lashings of razzmatazz.

LIV Golf offers shorter stroke play contests and a competitive team format. This April, Australia got a taste of it in Adelaide. Large, raucous crowds turned up, witnessing innovations like a “party hole” complete with a terrace, bars and a DJ.

LIV lured leading golfers such as Australia’s Cameron Smith with enormous contracts, in his case worth A$140 million (US$93.4 million). In response, the main tours banned LIV-signed golfers from most of their tournaments.

Inevitably, it ended up in the courts, with LIV suing the PGA Tour for restrictive practices, and the PGA countersuing for inducement to break contracts.

Peace suddenly broke out this week via a joint news release announcing the tours and LIV Golf would morph into a collectively