I don’t want to say I told you so about LIV Golf, but ...

LIV Golf, you say?

So stuck in the quagmire of a blood-soaked bunker – with no ratings, no spectators and no bloody clue what to do – that it is right now dying before our eyes?

Praise the Lord, and pass the binoculars. Who knew it was going to come to this?

I did, and said so from the start!

And yes, yes, yes, after the flurry of stories circulating on Thursday saying it was already dead, LIV did indeed release a statement saying they were not, though more tellingly, there has been total silence from the Saudi Investment Fund. There is no one who doesn’t think LIV is now any more than a twitching corpse, going through just a few more hideously expensive death-throes.

Who to write a pre-obituary, then? Me!

Here will lie LIV ...

It started with enough hype to kill a brown dog. It was the shiny new golf tour that was going to revolutionise the game, simply by throwing so much blood money at the best players that they couldn’t resist, and so leave those blazered bastards of the stuffy old PGA Tour in their wake. And yet, it never happened.

Oh, they got the players, alright. And got themselves a frontman – Greg Norman, the smiling face for the wretched and blood-soaked regime of Saudi Arabia that was funding it. Onya, Greg. (Don’t get me started, as I can be known to go on for some time. At length.)

And they even got a comp going, courtesy of signing on a bunch of golfers who took the filthy lucre from the Saudi regime with high-fives, instantly followed by high-dives from their positions atop the rankings, into the lands of the never-never.

Our own Cam Smith went from No.2 to currently No.222 and sinking. (When I pointed this out in a column, a reader who appears to be the world’s last living LIV supporter – is that you, Greg? – insisted that if the rankings system recognised LIV tournaments, Smith would only have fallen to No.100. So there. Great. So glad we got that cleared up.)

The problem was, no one came, and no one cared – outside a few golf-starved precincts like Adelaide and Johannesburg. They weren’t even attracted by LIV’s desperate format tweaks, which involved – I think – players joining up in teams, and initially playing over 54 holes, not 72. And I think there was one hole that was kind of a party hole, where spectators were encouraged to get pissed and carry on. Look, these observations are from reports only. I met people, who’d met people, who’d met people who’d watched, but I never met anyone who’d actually watched. The point is, the mob never gave a bugger! They wanted to watch sport, not this.

For the whole thing was never actually about golf. It was all about the unseemly red blood that soaked Riyadh’s main squares after those mass beheadings of gays and protesters, the systemic torture of civil rights activists, the bone-saw murder by a 15-man hit squad of the courageous journalist Jamal Khashoggi, on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (Cue Greg Norman: “Look, we’ve all made mistakes, and you just want to learn from those mistakes and how you can correct them going forward and ... ” And didn’t I ask you already? Bring me a BUCKET!)

Embarrassed by the blood, the Saudis wanted to paint over it with a nice, shiny, leaderboard. It was all about sports-washing, putting billions of dollars into a sport to give your regime a sheen of respectability.

But the punters wouldn’t have it. The TV audiences didn’t even know where to find it because no serious network would touch it. And so, inevitably, despite the blandishments that all was on track, it all started to fall apart. Two of LIV’s prime golfers, Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed, slunk back to the PGA with their tails between their legs. The whole thing was a miserable joke, and everyone knew it – clearly now including the Saudis themselves.

For despite the LIV assurances that news of their death has been greatly exaggerated, it is confirmed that the Saudis Public Investment Fund – chaired by the Crown Prince of Murder himself – has quietly shifted its 2026-2030 strategy to “sustainable value” and “private-sector participation” and all the other buzzwords that don’t include “doubling up on the five billion dollars we’ve put into LIV so far”.

It is clear that even they now get it. The whole thing was always a laundering operation that couldn’t even launder its own reputation. The world of golf and sport is better off without them.

And to all the players who sold their souls for a Saudi payday: yes, you’ll always have the money, and most of us understand that it was irrefusable. All we ask is that when you, in turn, slink back, you desist from all carry-on about how LIV actually offered anything but that – blood-money. You made your choice, and can enjoy the spoils, despite the red marks against your names.

What they said

Rory McIlroy on being just the fourth golfer to go back-to-back at Augusta: “I can’t believe I waited 17 years to get one green jacket, and now I get two in a row.”

McIlroy: “My mum and dad, they weren’t here last year to celebrate with us. Surprisingly, I had to convince them to come this year because they thought the reason I won was because they weren’t here. I’m glad we proved that wrong ... I owe everything to you. You are the most wonderful parents, and if I can be half the parent to Poppy as you are to me, I know I’ll have done a good job.”

Australian basketball player Alanna Smith speaking to this masthead after signing a $6 million deal with the Dallas Wings – the richest contract in Australian women’s basketball history: “It doesn’t feel real, to be honest. You put so much hard work into your craft, and to be rewarded for it is pretty cool. I just feel grateful to be in this position and hopefully lead the way for other women to get what they deserve as well.”

Man City’s Pep Guardiola on his team’s emergence from hibernation in April: “I’m not joking. The sun. In Manchester, there is never the sun. If the sun arrived in November, we would be champions in January. Honestly, the mood is better.”

Essendon president Andrew Welsh on coach Brad Scott: “At this stage, all the metrics that we’re following and the work that Brad’s doing with the playing group, we see no reason why he’s not going to be our next premiership coach.”

South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas doesn’t think Gather Round can work in Sydney: “Well, how many people are going to turn up at the Greater Western Sydney stadium [if] Freo’s playing Saint Kilda? There’ll be 12 people in the crowd ... There’s a secret sauce to Gather Round because it’s unique and different. If you try and replicate it in a way that’s sort of half-pregnant, you’re going to end up diminishing the real thing that’s got a magic to it.”

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan on the NFL match coming to town later this year:“It is going to be a historic event. We are the only city on the planet to have a tennis grand slam event, a Formula One grand prix and now an NFL regular season home game.”

Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy after they lost their fourth match in a row: “We did a lot of work on our defence this week. May as well have gone to the pub and had a couple of beers.”

US baseball’s Chicago White Sox had a pope-related promotion, which was so popular that it’s doing it again. Brooks Boyer, the chief revenue and marketing officer for the team: “The fans have spoken, and unlike some of our more limited quantity promotions, the White Sox Pope Hat is one we believe all fans should have the opportunity to take home.”

New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, after star player Francisco Lindor made some untypical mistakes: “It’s weird because that’s not him.”

Gout Gout on running the 200m faster than sprinting great Usain Bolt did at the same age: “There’s a big weight off my shoulders knowing I ran it legally, and I have the speed and my body to run times like that. So, it definitely feels great, and ready for more.”

LIV CEO Scott O’Neil, to his players, for all the world as if he actually believes it: “We signed up for this because we believe in disrupting the status quo. We have faced headwinds since the jump, and we’ve answered every time with resilience and grace. Now, we answer by doing what we do best: putting on the most compelling show in sports.” No, mate, you signed up because the money was too big to refuse. And your comp is an international embarrassment.

Team of the Week

Rory McIlroy. Nailed his second successive green jacket in the Masters.

Evie McCleary. Is running in the TCS London Marathon to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, in memory of her late brother-in-law. You can donate, here.

West Tigers. Flying high, atop the NRL table alongside Penrith.

Manly Sea Eagles. After yet another great win, 38-6 over the North Queensland Cowboys on Thursday night – a Cowboys side that had won their last four straight – at the time of writing they sit fourth on the table! The turnaround since Kieran Foran took over as coach has been extraordinary. Three on the trot, with the Eels next week, so that will make four!

Richmond. Now the only winless team in the AFL, as even Essendon jagged a victory.

Marie-Louise Eta. First woman appointed to manage a men’s team in one of Europe’s top five leagues after being named interim head coach of Bundesliga side Union Berlin.

Cameron Smith. Missed his sixth consecutive cut at a major.

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