Anyway, according to folk who study the ageing process, you reach your physical peak at 25, your mental peak at 35 and your sexual peak at the end of this column. So try to stay awake, will you?
The reason I’ve brought age up is that Justin Rose won the Farmers Insurance Open on Sunday at 45-years-young and some observers got so joyously giddy you’d think he was Old Tom Morris.
In golf years these days, of course, 45 is nowt, although those halfwits and loudmouths at last September’s Ryder Cup still heckled Rose with regular bellows of “grandpa”.
I wouldn’t worry Justin, old boy. I was ambling back from the nursery with my three-year-old son recently and a kindly woman of a certain vintage came coochy-cooing up to us and said, “aww, you’re a lovely wee girl, is this you enjoying a walk with grandad?”
It was a wonderfully withering double-whammy of unintended insults, which we both responded to with accepting smiles before shuffling off amid much muttering consternation.
But I digress. In addition to Rose’s win, last weekend’s event at Torrey Pines was also notable for the return to PGA Tour action of Brooks Koepka after he had quit LIV Golf.
Koepka, it seemed, was welcomed back with open arms. He even had a stint in the TV commentary box, in between regular mouthfuls of humble pie. Forgive and forget, eh?
My esteemed golf writing colleague, Ewan Murray, summed up the situation rather nicely.
“It is difficult to detect anything warm and cuddly in all of this. Elite golfers, who were already obscenely rich, take the bounty on offer from a Saudi Arabian-backed disruption model before shuffling back whence they came – essentially for a trivial penalty – when the novelty wears off. This is hardly sport at its purest.”
I was actually going to write that before he beat me to it. With Patrick Reed also jumping off the LIV gravy train in recent days, it’s not been a great spell for those involved with the Saudi-backed rebel circuit. Presumably, you won’t have much sympathy. Or much interest either?
It’s nearly four years now since LIV barged on to the scene, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining hacking the door down while shouting ‘Here’s Johnny’, and hosted its first event at the Centurion Club near Hemel Hempstead in June 2022.
The prize fund of some £19 million was double that of the following month’s Open at St Andrews.
A controversial, divisive, fascinating, bewildering and often crass golfing dawn was upon us.
With Greg Norman driving the initial assault, with the combative gusto of a tank commander in the turret pointing the way into battle, LIV launched a series of fearsome strikes on the established tours while luring heavyweight golfers to its promised land of milk and honey.
Players didn’t just have their snouts in the golden trough; they had their front trotters in it too.
Here in 2026, another LIV season gets underway this week in that great golfing hotbed of, ahem, Riyadh. But is the sun setting on the Saudi golf dream?
Koepka and Reed are the first big names to realise that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. This correspondent could’ve told them that. I had a neighbour, for instance, whose lawn was ravaged by Pythium Blight.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is bankrolling all sorts of eye-wateringly expensive extravagancies, is hardly down to the last few pennies but even those with access to a vast sovereign wealth piggybank must cut the cloth.
Recent reports state that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, has had to throttle back his mind-boggling, ruthlessly ambitious plans for NEOM, the futuristic Red Sea city development featuring fripperies such as flying cars, robotic dinosaurs and an artificial moon, as costs spiral to an estimated $8 trillion.
It’s a bit like Glasgow City Council’s Avenues Project.
Last week, meanwhile, it was announced that the 2029 Asian Winter Games in Saudi Arabia had been postponed indefinitely as doubts grew over the construction of a ski resort in the desert.
Oh well, they can crack on with NEOM’s flagship, multi-million-dollar inflatable dartboard manufacturing centre instead.
The World Cup is heading to Saudi Arabia in 2034. The PIF tendrils are coiled around football, Formula One, boxing, snooker and tennis.
The outlay on the golf project, under LIV chairman and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, is estimated at $6 billion. It’s an extraordinary amount for, essentially, a series of exhibitions devoid of any competitive relevance.
It many ways, it makes about as much financial sense as NEOM’s fake bloomin’ moon. Imagine the conversations in Bin Salman’s office?
“I’m sorry your Highness, but the robotic dinosaurs and that moon thing will have to go. And tell Al-Rumayyan to bin the golf too.”
Admitting defeat in golf’s civil war, of course, would be hugely embarrassing for the Saudis and one can’t imagine they’ll unfurl the white flag just yet.
Will it be LIV and let live? Or LIV and let die? Time, as always, will tell.
ends