Friday, June 16, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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In all the excitement and hyperbole over the ethical boundaries of artificial intelligence, professional golf has proved that it’s human money-grubbers we really need to fear.
It appears that star players from the PGA Tour, who in good conscience turned down lucrative contracts worth hundreds of millions of blood-soaked dollars, were sold out by their commissioner when he agreed to a merger with LIV Golf (a Saudi-backed rival league flush with money.)
Making matters far worse, the agreement was made secretly.
Although we’ve come to expect a low bar when it comes to unethical behavior by our duly elected politicians and even Supreme Court justices, this back-stabbing maneuver has shaken the foundation of professional sports.
It’s now no longer fashionable to label those who defected as traitors. Instead, they have to be considered shrewd businesspeople — even if most of them majored in golf and not business management while on college scholarship.
Left holding the bag, however, are the outspoken critics of LIV, who look like chumps for not taking the easy money when the opportunity was ripe. In supporting the supposed integrity of their league, they’ve unwittingly proved that a sucker really is born every minute. And that may be the biggest tragedy of this entire sordid mess.
