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Matt Cooper: Deluge of Saudi cash threatens to wash out Europe’s flagship golf events

This week’s Horizon Irish Open in Mount Juliet has a prize fund of €6m, and will be fighting for TV viewers against LIV’s $25m exhibition in Portland

Phil Mickelson plays in the 2022 US Open Championship: the US golfer is believed to have pocketed $200m for defecting to the Saudi-financed LIV series of events. Picture: Getty

How will golf’s ruling bodies fight off the threat of losing their playing members to the Saudi-financed LIV series of events? It won’t be by issuing pleas around morality and ethics, but by splashing the cash, at least if the PGA, the tour in the US, is anything to go by.

The defences offered in Europe by the DP World Tour, as the European game is now known, to fight off the disruptor are less ...