PGA’s ‘merger’ with LIV can’t be seen as anything other than a Saudi victory | Ewan Murray

Forget the talk of released tension: this deal is merely a depressing illustration that money can disrupt and distort everything in sport

The cliches have already been trotted out - a great moment for golf, a long-awaited delivery of a united front. Some would have you believe the shock announcement of peace in our time is cause for epic celebration. That the war is over, the adults in the room have won.

The reality is of course entirely different. No level of spin can alter that. The willingness of the PGA Tour, especially, and DP World Tour to forsake entrenched opposition to LIV Golf contradicts so much that has been said and done over the past two years. This serves as the latest, depressing illustration that bottomless pits of money can disrupt and distort everything in sport. And not just any bottomless pit; one emanating from a kingdom guilty of human rights abuses and which is using golf - plus football, plus anything else it can lay its hands on - as a tool to make people look the other way. Sportswashing works, kids. This chapter is to the tune of several billion dollars; chump change to the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF).