After four years, billions of dollars, and an ugly civil war in professional golf, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has decided it has seen enough. LIV Golf, the tour that was supposed to shake the foundations of professional sport, is now scrambling for survival after its sovereign backer walked away. The story of how it got here raises an uncomfortable question that was always lurking in the background: was LIV Golf ever actually meant to be a business at all?
The answer, increasingly, looks like no. And that realization carries implications far beyond golf.
