An all-inclusive Ryder Cup might be just what golf needs

If you’re a golf fan in this moment of divisiveness, it’s nice to occasionally hear a professional player express a sentiment to which you can relate.

Such sentiments have been few and far in this summer of money-driven rebellion on the sport’s global stage. Players on the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series and the PGA Tour have been happily swimming in a pool of new-found riches. The rich have been getting richer. And even if the adjacent talk has been an us-against-them smear-fest, nobody is pretending that, for the guys who swing the clubs, it’s been a mutually beneficial situation.

With so many of the world’s most popular players now playing on separate tours in the midst of an economic tete-a-tete that remains heated, it’s the fans who stand to lose.

So it was refreshing to hear Matt Fitzpatrick, the PGA Tour player and reigning US Open champion, offer a hopeful view of the possibilities for next year’s Ryder Cup between the United States and Europe in Italy. If next week’s President’s Cup is an omen, it’s possible the Ryder Cup — one of golf’s great showcases — will be diminished by golf’s great divide. On the upside, next week’s tournament between the US and the international team marks the first time that two Canadians will compete, those being Corey Conners and Taylor Pendrith. On the downside, the list of LIV Golf defectors who would have made the competition far more compelling — beginning with world No. 3 Cam Smith of Australia, who would have been the international team’s top player — makes it considerably more difficult to get excited about an event that, given the US team’s 11-1-1 all-time record, is always a competitive stretch.

That, of course, is terrible for golf fans. And so is the hardline talk from players like Rory McIlroy, who has been spending part of his week at Rome’s Italian Open insisting would-be European teammates who have left for LIV Golf should be disqualified from Ryder Cup consideration.

“I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: I don’t think any of those guys should be on the Ryder Cup team,” McIlroy told reporters in Rome.

Members of the most recent European team that have joined LIV Golf include Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood.

It doesn’t seem to bother Fitzpatrick, another Team Europe alumnus and the world No. 11.

“I want the 11 best guys we can get,” Fitzpatrick said on Wednesday, rightly assuming he’ll be one of Europe’s 12 players. “I’m not really too bothered about where they are going to come from.”

That’s the way it ought to be if the folks in charge are attempting to put on the best possible show: The best 12 players available for each side, regardless of tour affiliation, should be the only 12 players on site. It’s also the only reasonable way forward if golf, in the wake of this big-dollar skirmish, is ever going to get back to doing what’s best for the global game.

Maybe, in the beginning, it was easy to mock the LIV Golf enterprise for signing competitive has-beens, one of whom, Phil Mickelson, brought with him a PR firestorm of his own doing by making crude comments rationalizing his Saudi dealings. But those early days, like when McIlroy declared LIV Golf “dead in the water” back in February, are long over. The LIV roster now includes winners of 12 of the 26 most recent major championships. And this week’s news, gleaned from court documents in the ongoing legal battle between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, suggests LIV’s October season finale will pay out a global-record purse of $50 million, including $16 million to the winning foursome in the parallel team competition. The money is as real as the players, in other words. And all indications are the Saudi funds are bottomless enough that the business isn’t going anywhere, at least not anytime soon.

Which tells you one thing. Sure, the legal saber-rattling will continue. And there will be no love lost between the organizations. But the only logical outcome here is eventual co-operation, the sooner the better. LIV Golf has done more than enough to get a seat at that negotiating table. And the fact is, while the PGA Tour will remain the alpha in the room, LIV Golf has its own formidable cards to play.

Loyalty to an established organization is a compelling storyline, sure. And McIlroy has rightly elevated his stature as one of the game’s most eloquent statesmen in making his summer-long pitch for the PGA Tour. But it’s been nothing short of hypocritical to lambaste the LIV players for taking Saudi money when the Saudis do business all over the sports world, and have indeed done plenty of business with the PGA Tour.

It’s getting harder to make a case, if it was ever makable, that anyone’s the good guy here. It’s worth wondering if the provocative headline around PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s use of the tour’s private jet will have an effect on Monahan’s ability to broker consensus among loyalists on the non-profit PGA Tour. The report in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Monahan, along with using the jet to travel from tour stop to tour stop, also appeared to use it for trips to non-PGA Tour destinations like Nantucket, Mass., Montana, and Turks and Caicos. Maybe that’s standard operating procedure for today’s sports power brokers. And a stop at Turks and Caicos, the story pointed out, was to be a guest at the wedding of four-time major winner Brooks Koepka, which made it a business trip (albeit not a particularly profitable one, since Koepka announced his departure to the LIV series soon after).

The problems of sports commissioners aren’t exactly relatable to sports fans. But the former would be foolish to forever ignore the concerns of the latter. Golf’s two solitudes might be a windfall for players, but they’re not good for the product. It’s heartening that Fitzpatrick, at least, grasps the essence of the problem. If we’re deprived of watching the best against the best for too long, the grasping for power and money has simply gone too far.

“I just want to make sure that we win (the Ryder Cup) and I think that’s what’s most important,” Fitzpatrick said. “I know other guys might not necessarily agree with that. But I know the winning feeling is worth more than any sort of arguments you might have with other players.”

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