LIV traitors come to Trump Bedminster after scaring the golf establishment at the British Open

Can you imagine the awkwardness if stuffy Martin Slumbers, CEO of R&A, had to announce Sunday afternoon, in the shadow of the Royal & Ancient Clubhouse, on the 150th anniversary of golf’s grandest championship, that Saudi lapdog Bryson DeChambeau was “The Champion Golfer of the Year?”

Can you imagine the Trumpy braggadocio if, next Thursday at the LIV Golf event, the best of the butchers’ bootlickers was introduced thus: “In the 1 p.m. tee time, British Open champion Dustin Johnson!”

The R&A, the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, and Jack Nicklaus spent most of the calendar year demeaning and deriding the Saudi-backed, $2 billion sportswashing effort known as the LIV Golf, which lands at Trump National Golf Course at Bedminster, N.J., on July 27. It will be the third LIV event — a three-day affair earmarked by greed and gimmicks and garbage golf.

Entering the weekend in Scotland, a LIV player winning was very much a possibility. But that didn’t happen. Affable Australian Cam Smith, mullet flowing and putter scorching, charged from behind to beat fan favorite Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland, golf’s new spokesman, by two shots, and Cameron Young, a charging American, by one. English gentleman Tommy Fleetwood finished tied for fourth with smiling Norwegian talent Victor Hovland.

No LIV-ers on the front page of the leaderboard. Whew.

Twenty-seven years ago, John Daly, well-mulleted and anti-establishment, won the British Open at St. Andrews in 1995.

Then, the golf establishment sniffed in disapproval.

This time, when a mulleted golfer won, the golf establishment sighed a breath of relief.

The top names in the game have rejected the lure of the dirty lucre being offered to the world’s best golfers to help diminish the ugly image of the Saudi regime. The PGA Tour has indefinitely suspended any player who has participated in LIV, though the U.S. Department of Justice has begun an antitrust investigation. The R&A on Wednesday threatened to change its qualifying and exemption parameters for the British Open. The Masters remains mum ... intriguing, since Johnson won it in 2020 and LIV-ers Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, Charl Scwartzel, and Phil Mickelson, LIV’s biggest name, all have experienced their finest hours in golf at Augusta.

If you wonder why so many prominent players have defected to LIV, consider that when Schwartzel won the Masters in 2011, he pocketed $1.44 million. When he won the inaugural LIV event in London last month, he took home $4.75 million. Mickelson got $200 million to leave for LIV.

Despite what they say, they didn’t leave to grow the game. It’s about growing their bank accounts.

But if DJ or DeChambeau had found the weekend magic Smith found, things could have gone much worse for golf’s powers.

Johnson entered the weekend in seventh place, at 9-under par. However, he stalled over the weekend on a very pliant Old Course at St. Andrews and finished at 13-under, tied for sixth.

DeChambeau was 6-under after the cut, but he fell back to 4-under on Saturday before a 6-under 66 earned him eighth place at 12-under, one ahead of Mexican star Abraham Ancer, also a promising, young LIV member.

This will be a long battle between good and evil, between vice and virtue. Somehow the golf establishment — even with its racist, sexist, elitist, exclusionary roots — is on the side of good and virtue.

The theater of the previous four days could not have been better scripted. It took place at a mythical venue; the Olympus of golf, with all its gods in attendance. It happened at the home of Old and Young Tom Morris; the home of the game itself. Woods competed, Nicklaus became an honorary citizen of the town, Sir Nick Faldo did television commentary, and even Annika Sörenstam played in a pretournament event.

Justice seemed to be served apart from the leaderboard. Odious LIV CEO Greg Norman was shunned from the champions’ dinner. Mickelson, now sporting a sickly beard, played as horrible as he looked and missed the cut, as did 13 of the 24 LIV golfers in the Open field.

Johnson, at No. 18, carried the highest rank among the LIV golfers, and his brain-dead surfer persona makes him the perfect plow horse for his masters. DeChambeau, a self-styled genius whose excruciatingly slow play matches his excruciatingly slow wit, is still recovering from injury, but he was No. 4 on the world last summer.

Assuming LIV-ers remain outcasts, both will haunt the establishment for years.

But they won’t haunt it this week in New Jersey.

» READ MORE: LIV Golf faces future shadow ban from British Open, overshadows Tiger Woods at 150th edition