For those of you who may not follow golf closely you probably missed the 3-hour grilling that PGA’s  Ron Price and the newly appointed PGA Board member Jimmy Dunne experienced in Washington D.C. as they attempted to spin the PGA’s sudden embrace of Saudi Arabia.

For three hours, in front of a national television audience, the two representatives of the PGA  attempted to squirm, weasel and cry their way out of congressional questioning that explored the behind the scene deal making involving billions of dollars being offered to them by the Saudi Public Investment Fund which has over $700 billion in assets.

And as the commercial says “Money talks and nobody walks.”  In this case, money did plenty of talking and apparently no one wanted to walk from this billion-dollar bucketful of cash.

This PGA/Saudi Arabia sports scandal is comparable to the steroid baseball scandal that also prompted congressional hearings.  The winner in this battle of the PGA versus congressional oversight appears to be Congress and especially Democratic Sen. Blumenthal, the head of this Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

He articulated the threat posed by cozying up to an imperial totalitarian regime that has a questionable human rights, women’s rights, gay rights agenda, an uncomfortable connection with 9/11 as well as the murder of an American journalist.

Blumenthal suggested that this was sport washing of the worst order where a brutal regime is attempting to buy a cherished American institution in order to cleanse its bloody image.

And to make matters even worse for the PGA, Republican Sen. Hawley asked squirm-worthy questions to PGA’s Ron Price regarding its financial relationship with Communist China.

The actual head of the PGA, Jay Monahan, apparently was too sick or too scared to show up for these hearings so it was left to a shell-shocked Ron Price to do the dirty work.

At one point during this line of questioning, I expected Ron Price to stand up and run out of the room. Hawley’s questions were devastating and Price’s  answers began to approximate the famous legal line “I refuse to answer on the ground that it may be incriminating.”

The Saudi takeover of professional golf presents a series of interesting existential questions for the professional golfer as well as the golf fan.

Is the purpose of playing professional golf solely to earn money? If this is so, then the Saudi threat is real since they have $700  billion to buy the best players in the world who would receive large amounts of cash just for showing up.

But sports, whether on a professional or amateur level is about far more than money. Proof of this was seen when LIV defector Brooks Koepka won the PGA Championship in front of large cheering crowds.

You could see how meaningful it was for him to win a historic PGA  event in front of cheering fans. It was obvious that he was gratified to receive the fans’ love, to become a part of history just as much as to receive the money.

In the end, the question of LIV versus the PGA  relates to the real purpose of playing sports.

Both pro and amateur golfers play the game for applause, to gain respect, to prove one’s courage, to be a part of history and to add some meaning to life.

Money is actually only a small part of the motive to play a game.  Golf, as well as every other sport, are games we use to find meaning, purpose, approval, and respect. The applause tells us we have shown courage, strength  and talent.

We live in a cold, and cynical world and sports is one of the few places where we obtain clear evidence of our worth.

In the end, golf is more about love than it is about money.  So all the PGA has to do to regain its pride, dignity and bearing, is understand the deeper meaning of golf.

When you attempt to replace history, courage and competition with money you are truly lost in the empty meaningless world of greed, consumerism, and materialism.

In the end, all sports are about far more than money, even if it’s offered by the bucketful.