About the Divided World of Professional Golf

The professional golf world has been split apart by a new league, LIV, whose name represents the Roman numeral for "54", which is the score if every hole on an 18-hole golf course is birdied and is also the number of holes played in the new league's tournaments.  It is funded by the Saudi government and has lured many big-name golfers by giving them millions of dollars up front, just to sign up.  The established Professional Golfers Association is openly opposing this new rival league by banning "rebel" golfers from participating in their own tournaments.  Where do I stand on all this?  My entire life experience playing golf is on the miniature level, if you call it "golf" when you always hit the ball at close range with a putter and regard ricocheting it against walls and obstacles to be a standard element of the game.  I am not at all into the sport's culture and the different traditions and rules.  Nor am I into automatically condemning by association people and organizations who work on different levels with countries accused of human rights abuses as Saudi Arabia has been.  For example, I think it was wrong in tennis for Wimbledon to have banned players from their tournament this year if they were from Russia or Belarus. And I think that sometimes established leagues (I'm thinking of the NFL in particular) can unfairly squelch fair competition in the interests of keeping their own product expensive enough for higher profits and practicing control over their own players.  So, although I don't necessarily plan on watching any LIV tournaments (should they ever be shown on TV) I also don't have a problem with players jumping over to it...that's their free choice.  Sure, I would like countries to behave themselves more compassionately toward their own people and other countries with whom they have disputes, but this banning and boycotting isn't going to make them nicer, in my opinion.  I want different nations to invest in the welfare and prosperity of other nations and make the world more interrelated and interdependent. Still, you're going to have corrupt and autocratic figures running some, if not most of these countries.  It doesn't take diplomacy to get along with your buddies, it's the jerks of the world you need those skills for.  And I don't dig a wealthy monopolistic sports organization playing the human rights card as a smokescreen to conceal their real motive, which is to preserve their tight hold on a sport.  I am no fan of the Saudi government...it's brutal toward dissenters among its own population, is starving out a neighboring weaker Arab country in a siege war and is one of those American "allies"...like Pakistan...that seem to be the spawning ground for international terrorism.  The fact that they are behind this new pro golfing league to me weighs against its eventual public acceptance.  But the PGA can take their monopoly over professional golf, along with their high-sounding pronouncements and punitive actions, and ...