Georgie Bingham: Why Cam? Why?

LIV golfer Cameron Smith reacts to making the winning putt on the 18th green during the LIV Golf Invitational Series Chicago at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Illinois. (Photo by Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

It’s happened, I agree with Gary Player. This is not something I saw coming to be honest. He IS a golf great.

He IS in better shape than I’ll ever be and he MUST tell us about how fit he is and how he shoots his age on the golf course still. I find this all (nearly) endearing. I don’t put Player in my LOVE bracket though. I don’t love him like I LOVE Rory, Els, Tiger, etc. I have never put him in the Nicklaus, Palmer bracket (although he does, and many others would too) - I have heard him be cruelly and publicly fattist to people who fall short of his lofty fitness standards, and he, like many greats, sometimes loves the sound of his own voice so much he says whatever he wants unchallenged. He also likes Saudi money. Or maybe he doesn’t.

Because Player’s acerbic take down of Cameron Smith’s decision to go to LIV is bang on. He said it perfectly. What a tragic waste that move is. I have absolutely no idea whether Player’s ambassadorship of Saudi Golf would be at risk for this statement, but he and Fred Couples stole the headlines for me.

The thing I don’t understand if you are Cameron Smith, a man who’s going to make more money in his career than he could have ever dreamed about whether he stays on the the PGA Tour or goes to LIV, is why he chooses, right now, to go and be part of this fight, when no LIV golfer’s future is clear. The LIV field is full of former Major champions who don’t know whether they’ll get to go back to the competitions that made them great.

LIV golfers don’t know if they’ll get a world ranking and be able to qualify for majors. LIV golfers don’t yet know anything except they only play 54 holes, they get a shotgun start, Donald Trump is one of their greatest cheerleaders and they are all rich rich rich! Smith could literally sit back and watch this all play out for another year, avoid the drama and continue to entertain us all with his extraordinary talents and STILL name his price for a move to LIV a year after.

He could demand anything. He doesn’t have to be part of this period of weirdness. Players feeling they can leave the product that made them, effectively breaking up golf as we know it, and yet tragically not think its excruciating to DEMAND their rights still as PGA or DP World Tour players is embarrassing, let’s face it. If you work for any corporate entity and leave to set up their competitors and think you can still go back, banter with your work mates, eat in the staff canteen and use the gym you’d find out pretty quick you can’t. Which is why the whining is so pathetic.

The fact the LIV players also have the Saudis cold-flanneling their brows and their egos by funding their lawsuits that make them feel better about the decision they made doesn’t help either. While there are at least 15 high profile defections to LIV that I totally get, I also think we have found out that golfers really don’t like it up them.

We have discovered in this fascinating period that top top golfers live rather a charmed life where they really very rarely have to put up with too much criticism worse than throwing away a round or not winning a major. They really don’t like the fact that others judge their decision (which I am not sure all of them have been best advised to take).

But Cam Smith? Weirdest of them all. Well said Gary.

Georgie Bingham, broadcaster and journalist, writes a bi-weekly column for The Cut Stuff. She’s golf obsessed. She’s ready to go behind the tour.

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