This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Okay, I, a dedicated golfer, have a simple solution to the controversy roiling the sport I love.

Instruct the pro golfers who have defected to LIV golf from the PGA Tour to utter this simple, yet profound, phrase:  I did it for the money, not to grow the game of golf.

In other words, I did it to grow my wallet, not grow the game.

That honesty would do it for me.

Otherwise, enough from Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and their like.  No more talk about how they hope golf grows in the future by their actions today. 

Just take the money, admit it, and run. 

Then, we can get back to real competitive golf, not the LIV exhibition funded by blood money.

Plus, there have been some notions around that, if U.S. corporations do business with Saudi Arabia, which finances LIV golf, then it is okay for golfers to take tainted money from the Saudis. 

I object.  One mistake – corporate business with the Saudis – doesn’t authorize another, LIV golf.

So, if wallets are to be grown, so be it.  Just don’t mix that with growing the game we love.