While I’ve privately railed against all things LIV, and what it’s done to the sport of professional golf, I’ve yet to publicly comment. What could I say that Brandel Chamblee and other talking heads in the world of golf commentary who aren’t fans already haven’t?… There are problems on so many levels with what the PIF has done by throwing obscene amounts of money at the game’s biggest names. But let’s forget a moment the price for one’s integrity, the laughable notion it has anything to do with growing the game, that fact that giving athletes more money to compete less under less pressure arguably kills the most fiercely competitive professional sport and turns it into an exhibition, and that in the end, we’re talking about very wealthy men trying to portray themselves as victims of the greed of other wealthy men. Let’s instead consider a moment some of the very real victims of this massive money grab; the multitudes of charities the PGA Tour supports annually. Professional Golf has long donated more money to charity than all other professional sports combined. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and a multitude of other charities likely wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the PGA Tour, and countless actual lives wouldn’t have been saved over the years. The existence of LIV threatens all that, as the need for the PGA Tour to increase purses and benefits to players playing it to remain competitive with LIV will steadily siphon off money from those charities to give it to already wealthy golfers to keep them from taking even more money to play exhibitions around the globe for the upstart Saudi-backed endeavor. The PGA Tour is a 1.5 Billion dollar-a-year business. That’s big business, but the Saudis reportedly offered Tiger Woods alone more than half that just to sign up and show up, and if you look at in composite what they’ve paid a couple of handfuls of the game’s biggest names just to show up it has now eclipsed the entire annual budget of the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour has donated close to $4 Billion to charities around the world, but as they do their darndest to compete with LIV where do you think at least some of that money is going to come from?.. Much has been said by Mr. Chamblee and others about Sportswashing, and this being an attempt to rehabilitate the image of the Saudi Government through sports. If that’s true, and the true aim of the Saudis is to get people to forget past transgressions, instead of throwing oil tankers full of cash at rich guys beating a little white ball around idyllic venues the likes of which most people will never be privileged enough to step foot on, maybe they ought to consider helping the less fortunate they are inadvertently hurting by funding cancer research, fighting world hunger, or something similarly philanthropic that will help us all live just a little bit better, or longer, and for others just to remain alive. Because the way I see it, LIV, by its mere existence, is going to make it harder for some of the less fortunate among us to actually LIVE. So, as some of you current PGA Tour Players continue to mull the decision of whether or not to sell your souls to LIV, consider how hollow that life will be when you understand what your decision for some will ultimately mean… It’s in truth, as the immortal Paul McCartney once sang, LIV and let DIE!