Ryder Cup Captain Stenson’s exit for LIV puts golf a breaking point

The Ryder Cup is golf’s most epic event, its most valuable commodity. Yet, as the status quo in the professional game goes through this extraordinary period of disruption, it is impossible to know in what state even the Ryder Cup will survive.

If even the European captain is happy to defect from the Ryder Cup, then what sort of Ryder Cup is to be left behind?

Henrik Stenson’s exit to the breakaway LIV Golf tour had been widely expected over the last 48 hours. And though it is not shock news, it is a massive shock to the system. A jolt to the status quo. Stenson had signed a contract as European Ryder Cup captain; he has now reneged on that contract, an about-turn which appears to be the absolute two-fingers. He had accepted one of the highest honours in the game; there is no honour in the manner in which he has deserted his post.

However, the issue has now moved beyond the question around LIV Golf and whether it can get off the ground. That has now been answered. So too have the ethical questions about whether golfers will take Saudi money and leave the establishment – the very foundations on which their careers were all built – to fight for its survival without them. Yes, they are off. Not all of them, but the trickle has become a flood.

The game has moved with astonishing speed to the next phase: what is professional golf going to look like now?

If the two sides remain in this position of stand-off, then what, for instance, becomes of the Ryder Cup? Both sides will be stripped of a number – or maybe most – of their leading players. Consequentially, the Ryder Cup will be devalued, diminished, marginalised, stripped of its soaring status. In a very short period of time, that is what LIV Golf has achieved. Its stated intention was that it would be good for the help. It does not feel that way today.

Stenson had the option of carrying out his Ryder Cup captaincy, which is only for just more than another year, and defecting to LIV afterwards. Clearly he was offered infinitely more to sign now rather than next year. The reported figure of his signing-on fee is £40 million.

So this is a real statement by LIV. It is saying two things: 1) we can have almost anyone we want, and 2) we don’t care how we rock the establishment, indeed we take such pleasure in attacking the establishment that we are prepared to spend £40 million going after the 171st-ranked player in the world just to cause it further harm.

This is therefore an existential crisis. The establishment — the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) and the PGA Tour — can dig into their entrenched position. They can sit and wait to see if the LIV Golf project really is long-term. Maybe after two sequences of devalued Ryder Cups, the LIV experiment may falter, lose its sheen, and players may start to go back the other way again. That, though, is a risky position for the two tours to take; it is the blind-hope option.

The alternative is to start to negotiate. It appears clear that LIV Golf cannot be beaten; the time will surely soon be upon us when the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour will have to open a dialogue.

Professional golf can persevere with this civil war, though it appears right now that whoever emerges as the winner, their victory will be only pyrrhic. The casualty is the game.

The time is surely upon us when the two sides call a truce: let’s work together for the game, let’s not damage the game. It is not ideal. It is an impossibly long way from ideal. It may be the only way.

-The Times