Saudi Arabia upends the world of pro golf
Saudi Arabia upends the world of pro golf
In a sudden escalation of a bitter fight for control of elite professional golf, the tour suspended 17 players who are participating in the first event of the new tour, the LIV Golf International Series, not long after they had hit their first tee shots.
In a statement, the PGA Tour’s commissioner declared that the rebel pros — and any other player who joined them — were “no longer eligible to participate” in the events that for decades have been the highest level of pro golf.
The tour’s action, which seemed designed to ward off one of the biggest threats the nearly century-old tour has faced, significantly raised the stakes in a fight that has consumed professional pro golf in recent months.
The feud features star players, Saudi billions and manicured courses — all in the genteel world of elite pro golf, an unlikely forum for a public spat over money.
“These players have made their choice for their own financial-based reasons,” the PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, wrote.
He then warned other players tempted by Saudi offers that they would endure the same punishments, and lamented “all this talk of money, money and more money.”
That money, though, is the point: The LIV pro Golf Invitational Series represents not just another Gulf investment in a popular sport but a brazen and calculated attempt to supplant the elite level of that sport while casting some of golf’s best players as the prize in a billion-dollar tug of war.
“If Saudi Arabia wants to use the game of golf as a way for them to get to where they want to be, and they have the resources to accelerate that experience,” former U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell, one of the LIV Golf signings, said this week, “I think we’re proud to help them on that journey.”
Saudi Arabia upends the world of pro golf
Unlike the vanity purchase of a European football team or the hosting of a major global sporting event, Saudi Arabia’s foray into golf is no mere branding exercise, not just another example of what critics say is a reputation-cleansing process that some deride as the “sportswashing” of its global image. Instead, Saudi Arabia’s sudden entry into golf is part of a layered approach by the kingdom — not just through investments in sports but also in spheres such as business, entertainment and the arts — to alter perceptions of itself, externally and internally, as just a wealthy, conservative Muslim monarchy.
Those investments have accelerated rapidly since 2015, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began his ascent to become the de facto ruler and spearheaded a massive overhaul aimed at opening up the kingdom’s economy and culture. He started putting Saudi Arabia’s name in the news in ways not connected to its dismal human rights record, its stalemated military intervention in Yemen or the murder by Saudi agents of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
But in staging the most lucrative tournament in pro golf history, Saudi Arabia is also relying on a proven strategy of using its wealth to open doors and to enlist or, in a cynic’s view, buy some of the world’s best players as its partners. Some of the touches at its debut Thursday might have felt kitschy — red phone boxes and a double-decker bus, sentries dressed like British palace guards and a fleet of black cabs to deliver the players to their opening holes — but there was no hiding what was at play: In its huge payouts and significant investment, the series’s Saudi backers have taken direct aim at the structures and organizations that have governed professional golf for nearly a century, and the PGA Tour specifically.
pro golf : Saudi Arabia upends the world of pro golf
“It’s a shame that it’s going to fracture the game,” four-time major champion Rory McIlroy said this week, adding, “If the general public are confused about who is playing where and what tournament’s on this week and, ‘Oh, he plays there and he doesn’t get into these events,’ it just becomes so confusing.”
The pros who committed to play in the first LIV Series event tried to frame their decisions as principled ones solely about golf. Yet, in accepting Saudi riches in exchange for adding their personal sheen to the project, they’ve placed themselves at the center of a storm in which fans and human rights groups have questioned their motives; the PGA Tour has barred them from returning; and sponsors are cutting ties or distancing themselves.
All of it has opened rifts in a sport already grappling with its own long-standing image problems related to opportunity, exclusivity and race but one that reveres decorum and professes to be so wedded to values that players are expected to assess penalties on themselves when they violate its rules. Chastened by loud 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 reemerged 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 realised anytime soon.
In his final pretournament news conference this week, Mickelson felt the need to declare in one more uncomfortable moment in a week full of them that “I don’t condone human rights violations at all.” 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 alRumayyan, headlined the opening group in the first LIV Series pro-am.