American Exceptionalism as a Competitive Advantage in Golf: Hypocrisy of the PGA Tour

The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) was created in 1916 because some industrious businessmen saw an opportunity to make money and corner the golf equipment market amidst the rise in popularity of the game in the US. The Professional Golfers Association Tour (PGA Tour) branched off from the PGA in 1968 over financial and structural disputes. Although the PGA still organizes some tournaments and plays a significant role in the sport, the PGA Tour is the driving influence behind professional golf in the US. The PGA Tour is a legally incorporated not-for-profit entity meaning that all revenue must be donated to charity or put back into the business. A legal loophole that means the legal entity itself, the business, cannot profit but those who work for it can and do handsomely:

PGA commissioner: $8.9 million

PGA chief operating officer: $1.9 million

PGA chief marketing officer: $1.2 million

PGA senior vice president: $1.1 million

PGA executive vice president: $2 million

Of all the major sports leagues — NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB — the PGA Tour is the only one that pays no income taxes while taking in $1.5 billion in revenues last year, not bad for a ‘non-profit’. The PGA Tour used that money to build itself a new $65 million headquarters and about half of it to pay its full-time, non-player employees.

Professional golfers are independent contractors which means they can contract with anyone they want. But the PGA Tour contract states that they cannot participate in conflicting international events without the express written consent of the PGA Tour commissioner and participating in conflicting North American events is strictly forbidden. Failure to abide by these terms can result in sanctions from the PGA Tour up to and including suspension and expulsion. Therefore, if a man wants to make a living playing professional golf in the US, the PGA Tour is the only option, they have a de facto monopoly on the sport. And, as with any monopoly, the PGA Tour charges higher prices and pays lower wages than they would have to if professional golf was a competitive market.

PGA Tour players aren’t guaranteed anything, they earn a small fraction of what other professional athletes make if they make the weekend cut and they are forced to pay for their own travel and other expenses. Top ranked players have earned $20 million in their career from the PGA Tour when other professional athletes make that much in a single season.

Obviously, the PGA Tour knows it has a good thing going and doesn’t want the competition which is why they’re pushing back so hard against the new Saudi backed LIV golf tour. The LIV tour is offering golfers exponentially more money than the PGA Tour, travel expenses and a more relaxed tour season schedule so players have more personal time.

Of course the PGA Tour feels threatened and it should, so the PGA Tour marketing department had to come up with a strategy for vilifying the LIV tour. They couldn’t use competition as an excuse because everyone knows that competition means more opportunity for the players so that would come across as being selfish and greedy and not having golf’s or the player’s best interests at heart as they claim. Their strategy really couldn’t have anything to do with golf because there really isn’t any downside to the game, only to the PGA Tour’s coffers. So they had no choice left but to make it political, a desperate character assignation of those funding the LIV tour: the Saudi Kingdom. And their character assignation of choice? ‘Human Rights Abuses’.

The message is that the Saudi Kingdom has historically committed egregious acts of inhumanity against its own people. Things like torture, executions, limits on free speech and protests, discrimination against women, arrest and detention without charge, religious discrimination, migrant worker deportation, and banning of human rights organizations. Those things may be true or not, I don’t know, but I don’t see what any of that has to do with golf. Is the message that since the tour is backed by a government accused of human evils that their golf tournaments should be condemned and those who play on them? Are we supposed to believe that they are being paid with ‘blood money’ which makes them bad people or un-American? I mean what kind of man would participate in such a horrible thing right?

If the American PGA Tour wants to taint Saudi money bloody red, then what color should the US dollar be, black as death? The PGA is a golf tour in a country that was founded on some of the most egregious human rights abuses in world history. A culture rooted in slavery, the subjugation of women and immigrants, the colonization of native Americans and the outright theft of land and resources from Mexico. The PGA Tour itself banned women and minorities until the 1961.

To this day the US government, maintains an empire created by the annexation, colonization, overthrow and occupation of foreign lands for hundreds of years and the collateral deaths of millions. A government of clandestine agencies like the CIA which maintain secret black ops facilities around the world used for unlawful detainment, interrogation and torture — we’ve all seen the pictures of torture and abuse from Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba — and the NSA which spies on everyone including its own citizens. The only military in the history of mankind to use nuclear weapons to kill innocent men, women and children. A country which regularly executes people with hundreds more on ‘death row’. An alphabet soup of departments, bureaus and offices that regulate speech, communications, travel, medical care, what food we can eat and even what plants we can smoke. The US has a police culture of ‘stop and frisk’ and ‘Asset Forfeiture’ confiscating people’s wealth without ever being suspected or charged with a crime. People are regularly executed by the police, then it’s covered up and protected by the ‘thin blue line’.

Ever wonder why the US Dollar is considered the world reserve currency? Because the US government has an arms deal with OPEC nations which includes the Saudi Kingdom. The US will supply them with arms if they only sell oil denominated in US Dollars. Since everyone needs oil, the demand for and stability of the US Dollar is guaranteed.

The PGA Tour is an embarrassment of riches acting like spoiled little children who would rather take their ball and go home than allow others to play. They come across as the stereotypical sexist southern racist who didn’t allow black members until 1990 at Augusta National Golf Club nor women until 2012. Home of the PGA Tour’s pride and joy ‘The Masters’ tournament. The name of the tournament sounds appropriate now doesn’t it?

The game of golf is bigger than the PGA Tour, bigger than the players, bigger than the Saudi Kingdom and bigger than LIV. Anyone not embracing any sort of new opportunities for the players and the game are not true apostles. They are false prophets motivated by something other than a love of the game, something more sinister and malevolent.