MIAMI — Dustin Johnson sat in front of a “LIV Golf” logo in England this week and, with a straight face, said, “I chose what’s best for me and my family.”
The money, he meant. Blood money, but never mind that.
When you have made a mere $72 million in your PGA Tour career, when your additional outside endorsement money starts with the TaylorMade cap they pay you to wear, when your father-in-law happens to be Wayne Gretzky, well, you get used to wealth and all that matters is more more more.
No matter the cost, apparently.
The cost in reputation, in legacy — all of the things that comprise one’s good name, the things so readily sacrificed in the name of greed.
Johnson is not alone. Former star Greg Norman and fading star Phil Mickelson are with him. So are Sergio Garcia, Graeme McDowell and a bunch of lesser lights.
But Johnson, a two-time major winner, currently ranked No. 15 in the world and still in his prime(ish) at 37, is the top current golfer to abandon the PGA Tour for the riches of the upstart LIV Invitational Golf Series.
On Wednesday, it was reported 2020 U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau will join the breakout tour for its first U.S. event in three weeks in Portland, Ore.
History will note these are the dubious trailblazers who, in 2022, volunteered themselves as for-hire pawns of Saudi Arabia and all it stands for. And they always will be, the stain on their name indelible.
The first of eight tournaments in the LIV season is this week, beginning Thursday on a course just north of London.
It has no mainstream television network showing it.
It offers no world-ranking points.
It is a 54-hole, shotgun-start golf tournament happening in a vacuum.
The 48-man field is heavy with marginal pros you wouldn’t recognize if they walked past you in a Walmart.
Did I mention there is $25 million prize prize purse including $4 million to the winner? And that, unlike the PGA Tour, there are not cuts and even last place gets paid?
