Opinion | A greedy Dustin Johnson blindsiding RBC Canadian Open in favour of Saudi-funded series is a slap in the face

When RBC assumed sponsorship of the Canadian Open in 2008, the bank was rightfully hailed as a saviour of the historic golf tournament, among the oldest in the world.

Bell Canada had departed from the marquee after 2006, and the 2007 tournament at Angus Glen Golf Club in Markham, was run without a title sponsor and lost money. Its predicament at the time, in fact, was the primary reason it got stuck behind the British Open when the PGA Tour was restructuring its schedule to accommodate the newly minted FedEx Cup, a lousy date it held for a dozen years.

That event, however, was where RBC met with Golf Canada, the PGA Tour and a group of key players, including Canadians Mike Weir and Stephen Ames and the championship’s back-to-back winner Jim Furyk, to sow the seeds of what has become a fruitful partnership.

Except that it wasn’t a sterling first few years when it came to the names etched on the Canadian Open trophy on RBC’s budget. Chez Reavie (2008), Nathan Green (2009), Carl Pettersson (2010), Sean O’Hair (2011) and Scott Piercy (2012), weren’t exactly marketable stars. The rather disrespectable inside joke when Green defeated Retief Goosen in a playoff in 2009 was, “Didn’t he win last year?”

But it got better. RBC staffer Brandt Snedeker won in 2013. Jason Day, freshly inked to an RBC deal, won in 2015. And then the tournament hit the jackpot when Dustin Johnson, he too with a relatively new RBC shield on his golf bag and shirt sleeve, emerged victorious in 2018. Johnson was the No. 1 player in the world at the time, and he was followed by an even bigger name winning in 2019 — the hugely popular Rory McIlroy.

Then COVID, two cancellations and this year a rival golf league backed by Saudi money and fronted by two-time Canadian Open champion Greg Norman opting to start its schedule on the same week Canada will finally see its men’s open played again. And now a bombshell with Johnson, still a member of Team RBC, but likely not for much longer, announcing he is headed to London to play the first LIV Golf Invitational Series event instead of Canada.

The PGA Tour, RBC and Golf Canada officials were blindsided.

Johnson, a two-time major winner and currently the 13th-ranked player in the world, was linked to LIV Golf earlier this year, but he released a statement in February pledging his commitment to the PGA Tour after Phil Mickelson became persona non grata in golf circles for the salacious comments that he made to golf journalist Alan Shipnuck about both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.

So much for that loyalty.

“Dustin has been contemplating the opportunity off and on for the past couple of years. Ultimately, he decided it was in his and his family’s best interest to pursue it. Dustin has never had any issue with the PGA Tour and is grateful for all it has given him but in the end felt this was too compelling to pass up,” Johnson’s agent, David Winkler, wrote in a text message Tuesday night to The Associated Press golf reporter Doug Ferguson.

In other words, Johnson could not or would not turn down what is believed to be an absurd amount of appearance money from LIV Golf, possibly in the hundreds of millions, plus the whopping amount of prize money up for grabs in the series of no-cut events ($25 million in London).

He and others, Sergio Garcia, Kevin Na, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and the RBC-sponsored Graeme McDowell among them, are clearly fine from whence the money comes — a Saudi regime with a horrific human rights record that a U.S. intelligence report says murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi-born Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident, in 2018. They are also prepared to play chicken with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who has threatened to ban golfers who opt to play LIV Golf events from competing on the PGA Tour for life. Whether such a sanction could hold up in court is debatable.

This is a slap in the face to RBC and the RBC Canadian Open from a clearly unsympathetic and money-hungry Johnson, already a very rich man and still among the game’s biggest names despite a slip in his play the last two years. Johnson, who recently married Paulina Gretzky, Wayne’s daughter, made a habit of playing the Canadian Open even before signing with RBC. It’s a dis from McDowell too, but his presence at Toronto’s St. George’s Golf and Country Club wasn’t going to sell any tickets and his deal with the bank was unlikely to be renewed when it expires.

Via its social channels, the tournament released a statement following Johnson’s announcement that read, “Together with our partners at RBC, we are disappointed to learn at this late stage that Dustin Johnson has made the decision to play the LIV Golf event. As a past RBC Canadian Open champion, Canadian golf fans were looking forward to DJ’s return this year. Our focus continues to be on hosting the widely celebrated return of the RBC Canadian Open and welcoming the world’s best players to Canada.”

Despite Johnson turning his back on the PGA Tour and RBC Canadian Open, the event still has a top-heavy field. McIlroy is back to defend his title — his pre-tournament press conference will be fun — and he will be joined at St. George’s by recent PGA Championship winner Justin Thomas and current world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.

All three of those players, it could easily be argued, are a bigger draw than Johnson. In fact, if the tournament was going to lose one of those four, Johnson is likely the one that fans attending would choose.

And now he’s gone.

Jason Logan is the editor of SCOREGolf Magazine and is based in Toronto. He is a contributor to the Star’s Sports section. Follow him on Twitter: @jasonSCOREGolf

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