LIV Golf isn’t about sport – it’s about cold, hard cash

‘Golf, but louder’ proclaims the website of LIV Golf, followed by countless similarly hollow soundbites.

And nothing talks quite so loudly as money.

For a sport long lauded for etiquette, a sacred respect for the rules and reverential appreciation of its heritage, golf’s reputation is suddenly being dragged through the gutter amid a bitter civil war.

Since the Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Tour, a rival to current PGA and European Tours emerged on the scene promising to ‘supercharge golf and transform it into the sport it’s destined to become,’ the only thing supercharged has been resentment.

If you haven’t been following the saga closely, it’s worth pausing for a quick recap.

In October last year, former world number one Greg Norman became the public face of a new F1-style professional golf tour vowing to revolutionise the game – and, crucially, deliver more wealth to the players at the top of the sport.

In theory it sounds like an exciting concept, were it not for the significant problem that it puts them in direct competition with the existing status quo led by America’s PGA Tour and Europe’s DP World Tour.

Norman’s attempts to reassure that he wanted to work with the game’s authorities, not against them, was at best naive – but more widely considered a calculated smokescreen for a man who had tried and failed to lead a breakaway tour 27 years previously.

This time it’s different, and the reason for that boils down to one thing – cold, hard cash.

Blood money, some say, given that the primary source of funding comes from a hard-line regime condemned by Amnesty International for its litany of human rights abuses, execution of its citizens, denial of women’s rights and free speech.

It’s less than four years since US-based journalist