Greed, for lack of a better word … is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies; cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge … has marked the upward surge of mankind.
– Gordon Gekko
And greed will not only save the sport of golf … but also that other malfunctioning corporation otherwise known as the world economy.
There’s a definite seam of naked and unadulterated greed, which now infects every aspect of this evolution of LIV Golf. The offer to Harold Varner III was right off the script of The Godfather III – a personal entreaty; a “financial breakthrough” too good to refuse. The hook dangled right under the left nostril of Australia’s own Cameron Smith, loaded with morsels so attractive, an offer the Queenslander simply “couldn’t ignore”.
Which kind of renders the whole “future of golf” line, which Smith now spruiks, as nothing other than white noise. Whether LIV Golf’s rivers of gold ever form one giant confluence with the raging waters of the PGA Tour is unknown and actually can’t be known right now. It does seem though, that there’s a Colgate factory’s worth of toothpaste to re-tube.
Maybe then an inspection and consideration of the actual terms and conditions that Smith and his band of new brothers might’ve have signed up to should operate as a useful portent.
Australian duo Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman have signed up for LIV Golf.Credit:Getty
The LIV player agreements signed by the likes of recruits Hudson Swafford and Australia’s Matt Jones – which were officially released (in an albeit redacted form) by a US District Court following those players’ unsuccessful application for injunctive relief which would have allowed each to participate in the just-completed PGA Tour end-of-season playoffs – are instructive in terms of what Smith’s world looks like now.
One matter which is absolutely clear and which mustn’t be misunderstood, is that while LIV Golf might look like the PGA Tour, LIV isn’t the same. Whereas the PGA Tour is a series of tournaments where players can pretty much comprise their own schedule to suit themselves, the LIV structure is remarkably different.
Instead, LIV Golf is a league. In some ways it more closely resembles the NRL than the PGA Tour. The commitment of the contracted player, as a “fundamental condition” of the playing contract, is that the player WILL participate in each regular season tournament, each team world championship event, and each international series tournament organised by Norman and his people. So much for the notion of playing less, pretty much pleasing yourself and leaving more time for fishing.
The only exceptions arise where there exists a “legitimate excuse” for a player not playing, where the term is given a constricted definition consisting of medically certified illnesses and injuries preventing a player playing, or any other event or cause which LIV in its “sole discretion” determines as being a reasonable justification for not playing.
Specific examples given in the contract are the birth of a player’s child, and the death or serious illness of a family member. Birthday parties and friends’ weddings then … they’re out unless ‘The Shark’ decides otherwise in his infinite and unbending wisdom.
It’s a complete misnomer then, this fabled concept of less tournaments, a more relaxed lifestyle and all of that. The promise, scribed in ink in the contract, is that the player will faithfully meet all of his playing commitments and obligations, wherein any failure to do so is expressly prescribed to constitute a “material breach” of the contract. We’ll get to what consequences flow there from a bit later because there’s a sting in the tail.
First, however, some other observations really do need to be made. LIV-contracted players irrevocably and permanently licence to LIV all of their personal attributes and image rights for the purpose of broadcasting LIV’s tournaments, commercialising its events, promoting its sponsors and otherwise.
None of these terms are especially unusual in relationships between professional athletes and their sports, but this is a helluva lot of trust for an athlete to place in an entirely untried quantity, which LIV is. Same goes for the controls which LIV seek to impose over players’ usage of social media and the content deployed. Eighteen months ago, LIV wasn’t a thing and running a sports league wasn’t within Norman’s wheelhouse of experience.
Pat Perez, Talor Gooch, Greg Norman, Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed at the LIV Golf Invitational in Portland in July.Credit:Getty
Further, there is a definition of “apparel” where basically what is ring-fenced is anything worn, used or displayed by the player. The term doesn’t appear in the unredacted text of the contract released by the order of the US District Court.
Noting however that the likes of Patrick Reed was clothed head-to-toe in LIV-branded items when he played at St Andrews, it might well be that players are obliged to dress a certain way when out and about in the wider world, kind of like Amish people. These are golf’s brave new frontiersmen after all.
The sting in the tail with all of this though ties back to the concept of “material breach” and the contractual consequences which flow if you’re determined by Norman to be guilty of such heinous misbehaviour.
Specifically, if a player, for whatever reason, doesn’t play in a tournament which he is required to play in, LIV retains the right to terminate the player’s playing contract. If LIV elects to terminate the playing contract, the golfer is then obliged, within 21 days, to refund to LIV any sums previously paid to him by way of any signing-on fees or indeed any amounts other than prizemoney.
In one sense you might well think this is fair enough and reasonable. Perhaps it is. For there has to be a value extracted if Smith, as an example, is to be paid $140 million to sign on in the first place.
But the nub of the problem is this: even the shrewdest players probably don’t completely appreciate the full ramifications of what they’re committing to, where they’re of course jeopardising their future prospects and entire reputations if everything in Norman’s Nirvana goes to hell in a handbasket.
The LIV Golf contract is one seriously onerous prenuptial agreement, where players are as much pawns in a chess game as they are supposedly independent and free contractors and the stars of the show.
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