Cleary: The LIV Golf vs PGA Tour argument is a rabbit hole full of Komodo Dragons (2024)

These are rabbit holes full of Komodo dragons, people, and we needn't crawl down them.

As Australians, we’ve been here before.

World Series Cricket turned up in 1977, divided sports lovers. At the Cleary house in Colebatch Place, Curtin ACT 2605, we were an ‘Establishment’, ABC television house and against Kerry Packer’s ‘circus’ which took off with my man Dennis Lillee and mum’s man Doug Walters, and so manyChappells, and which attracted so few spectators to VFL Park for a ‘Super Test’ that a British newspaper described the scene, gloriously, as ‘confetti at a graveyard’.

We didn’t have Channel 9 anyway. But the family was against it.

By 1980 WSC was filling the Sydney Cricket Ground with games – get this –under lights,andDon Bradmanand the curmudgeons of the Australian Cricket Board sniffed the breeze, stopped the fight and sold Packer the television rights, which is all he wanted in the first place.

And everyone got paid.

In 1995 Packer was at it again, this time jousting withRupert Murdoch, when something called ‘Super League’ exploded onto our consciousness (on April 1, maybe old Rupe does have a sense of humour), and rent the game of rugby league asunder.

Players, coaches, media and, most of all, we the people, the sport's poor bloody fans, were asked to take a side and fight for one great media house over the other.There wasn't a choice. It was Them or Us.

And they were vexed times at Ridgemont High.

And so fight we did, for many years, until the bastards joined up together and begat a National Rugby League which was broadcast by both media houses.

And everyone got paid.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has been a little different because the rebels are the establishment.The IPL is backed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which effectively runs the International Cricket Council (ICC).

And the BCCI said to everyone else in world cricket: we’re having an IPL, we are buying your players - in a crude man-auction, as if they are horses - it is going to run on these dates, and you will have to work around it. Tough sh*t.

And cricket has found its place, after a fashion, and there is an uneasy detente as administrators try to keep long-form Test cricket alive while billions of consumers hurl their rupees at the T20 Whack-a-Mole.

Yet in all three cases the parties came together. There was give and take, the moguls had the accountants and lawyers divide up the great prize, and these professional sports at the pointy end were ‘one’ again.

And everyone got paid.

And it will happen in golf because it’s happening now. The Saudis want respectability (before the oil runs out) and their PIF will continue to spend and keep LIV living.

The PGA Tour's money-heads - the Fenway Sports Group, Monahan, the players - want to get paid. And if they can hive off with a piece of the trillion-dollar PIF, why not?They are professional, hard-eyed negoatiators who'll come to the conclusion, eventually, after bit more blood's been spilled, that the 'war' must end.

Because, in the end, everyone must get paid. That's the end game. Only thing now to decide, really, is who plays where and when. Call it the million-dollar minutaie.

Like the three instances mentioned – the players have been paid, and will be paid, ridiculous fees. They will follow the money, as professionals do. And my prediction is this: players will go between tours.

Because why not? Both tours will want the best players. Both tours will be funded by the same spigot of Saudi money, Big TV and corporate largesse. And the players will test their status as 'independant contractors' and, like the lawyers, will win.

Rory McIlroyhas planted his flag and said that he wants to play on the PGA Tour. And he can and he most likely will.

But what's to say, once the money-heads work out how everyone's going to get paid, that Rory won't make cameos on LIV? They don't mind a wildcard. Rory is no longer fighting for the PGA Tour. He wants to play - and spread the love of - golf around the world.

Rory should be able to do both.

And we, the discerning golf consumer with the intelligence to enjoy and find positives in any format of the great game, can like both. It is possible. They are both golf.

Yes, wecanenjoy one format over the other. Doesn't mean the other one is rubbish.

Whether it'sBrooks Koepkatearing up Adelaide orScottie Schefflereating South Carolina - or Nellie Korda! Five in a row! - we can take the best from both. We can be positive. We can expand our sense and sensibility.

AsDonny Trump's wifeMelaniasaid: Be best.

And don't be this: a pawn forGreg NormanorJay Monahanor the Grand High Emperors of Oil in Arabia or Texas or any other bloody place.

Screw you, Komodo dragons.