continued..
All of it has opened rifts in a sport already grappling with its own
longstanding image problems related to opportunity, exclusivity and race, but one that reveres decorum, and professes to be so wedded to values like honor and sportsmanship that players are expected to assess penalties on themselves if they violate its rules.
Saudi Arabia is, of course, not the first country to use sports as a platform to burnish its global image. Its wealthy Gulf neighbors, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and most notably Qatar, which will host soccer’s World Cup later this year, all have invested heavily in international sports over the past two decades.
But Saudi Arabia’s venture into golf may be the most ambitious effort yet by a Gulf country to undermine the existing structures of a sport: In effect, it is trying to use its wealth to lure players away from the most prominent tournaments and the most well-established circuit in golf, the PGA Tour, by creating what is an entirely new tour. Not that many of the players taking part this week were eager to talk about those motives.
McDowell admitted as much in his
meandering answer to a question that, among other topics, raised the Saudi-led war in Yemen and its
execution of 81 people on a single day in March. “We’re just here,” he said, “to focus on the golf.”
It has been, after all, a rocky start. Even before the first ball was struck this week at the Centurion Club just outside London, the cash-soaked LIV Series — financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — had become a lightning rod for controversy. One of its biggest signings, Phil Mickelson, provoked outrage in February when he praised the series as a “
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” even as he called Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights “
horrible” and used an expletive to describe the country’s leaders as “scary.”
The project’s main architect, the former player Greg Norman, made things worse a few weeks later when he dismissed Saudi Arabia’s murder and dismemberment of
Khashoggi by saying, “
Look, we’ve all made mistakes.”
Most, but notably
not all, of the world’s top players have rejected the new series out of hand: McIlroy, for example, derided the project as a
money grab in February. And on Wednesday, while saying he understood the motivations of the players who had joined up, he made clear he would not take part.
“If it’s purely for money,”
McIlroy said, “it never seems to go the way you want it to.”
Even the rare chances for LIV Series players to defend their decisions to reporters directly this week have often been tense. At a news conference on Wednesday, a group of players were asked if they would take part in a tournament in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia or apartheid South Africa “
if the money was right.” A day earlier, the Korean American player Kevin Na was caught on a live microphone saying, “This is uncomfortable,” as his
news conference ended with a British reporter shouting over the moderator.
Most of the players, though, seem to have concluded that the money was just too good to pass up. The reported $150 million inducement to
Johnson, the highest-ranked player to jump to the new series, would be more than double the total prize money he has earned on tour in his career. The prize money on offer to the last-place finisher at Centurion this week is $120,000, which is $120,000 more than coming last in a PGA Tour event is worth. The $4 million check for the winner is about three times the winner’s share at this week’s PGA Tour event, the Canadian Open.
The money, in fact, may be LIV Golf’s biggest lure at the moment: Two more major champions,
Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed, were said to be close to accepting similarly large paydays to join the series when it shifts to the United States this summer, including a visit to New Jersey for the first of two scheduled events at Donald Trump-owned courses.
Saudi Arabia’s embrace of golf is part of a wider focus on sport as a means for the kingdom to achieve the ambitious political and economic goals of the Saudi crown prince. Similar controversies involving Saudi interests have already stalked other sports, including
boxing,
auto racing and most notably
international soccer.
But where previous Gulf ambitions often took the form of an investment in a sport, the sudden push into golf by Saudi Arabia appeared to be an effort to control the top level of an entire sport, at any cost. Tiger Woods, for example, reportedly turned down nearly $1 billion to participate in the LIV Series, and other top stars have at least had their heads turned.
Arguably the most high-profile, and perhaps the most controversial, figure, to join the series is Mickelson, a six-time major champion who was for years one of the PGA Tour’s most popular and marketable players. He has made no secret of the fact that his interest was tied to his contempt for the PGA Tour, which he accused of “obnoxious greed.”
Chastened by vociferous criticism of his headline-making remarks about Saudi Arabia earlier this year, and the decisions of
several of his sponsors to sever ties with him, Mickelson on Wednesday re-emerged on the public stage but declined to provide details of his relationship with LIV or discuss the PGA.
“I feel that contract agreements should be private,” said Mickelson, who reportedly is receiving $200 million to participate.
Any hopes that Mickelson, his new colleagues or their new Saudi financiers may have had of the narrative shifting quickly to action on the course, though, are unlikely to be realized anytime soon.
“I don’t condone human rights violations at all,” Mickelson said in one of the more uncomfortable news conference moments in a week filled with them.Soon afterward, dressed in shorts and a windbreaker, he was off to the first tee, where he and a board member of the Public Investment Fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, headlined the opening group in the first LIV Series Pro-Am.
and Colt has HV3 join em for about 15 minutes at the Harbor Town and it was hands down refreshing and enjoyable getting different (younger) voices covering the event on the course.
