It is a golf tour that would make a coddled Saudi bureaucrat happy. The work-week is short: 54 holes over three days, instead of the 72 over four days that is usual at other tournaments. A rolling start means play can finish within five hours. Those who play badly cannot fail to make the cut; even the worst collects $120,000. Take a World Bank report on the Gulf’s laid-back, overpaid public sector, add caddies and caps, and you have the concept behind the Saudi-financed liv tour. (liv, by the way, is the Roman numeral for 54, an impossibly low score for one round.)
Golf is usually a polite game. But the Saudi-backed tour, which held its inaugural event near London on June 9th, has brought howls of vituperation. The pga Tour, which runs the established circuit for top players, suspended 17 rebel players who took part in liv’s first event. Some golfers fear it will “fracture the game”. Fans have railed against defectors taking exorbitant sums to join the new tour. For all the changes in Saudi Arabia over the past seven years, the kingdom is stuck on its old strategy of trying to buy its way out of a shoddy reputation.
