Johnson’s act of greed shines through in Saudi’s vulgar rebranding game

There is a key problem with the distribution of a $4m (£3.2m)first prize in a tournament that features a shotgun start. There will be no way of knowing if the winning putt at the Centurion Club on Saturday is to be holed on the 1st, 7th, 13th or any other green. Perhaps the conventional stroke-play format as used on mainstream tours is boring to some but at least people know where to be for the denouement.

If this were the only potentially messy element of the LIV Golf Series, which makes its debut in Hertfordshire on Thursday, Greg Norman would have no cause to worry. Instead, confirmation that Graeme McDowell and Dustin Johnson would feature in the $25m event sparked the kind of backlash that was inevitable given bottomless financing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The Royal Bank of Canada ended its sponsorship of both players. Golf, once such a safe domain for the corporate classes, now carries an element of risk as never before.

Related: McIlroy dismisses Saudi Arabia-backed opener as not a ‘proper tournament’

A number of players have been sheltered by focus on Phil Mickelson – whose dalliances with the Saudis are the stuff of dubious legend – and to a subsequent extent Johnson, but when they tee up in the coming days, their role in a sportswashing exercise will be abundantly clear.

This cannot legitimately be labelled in any other terms: there is no commercial sense whatsoever in dishing out wild sums to those who are either marking time until the senior tour, would not turn heads in any high street in the UK or, in Johnson’s case, whose PGA Tour earnings from the game total around $72m, have torched their reputation by such a grotesque display of greed.

Golfers are willing pawns in Saudi’s rebranding