“If you get stuck, don’t mention my name.”
Words of wisdom from the great philosopher Young Jeezy in his hit album “Soul Survivor”. Words his fellow golfers and LIV Golf Invitational organizers would like Phil Mickelson to take to heart when he spoke to an unauthorized biographer earlier this year, sparking a fiery storm and debating whether rebellious golf touring means disrupting the PGA Tour. like selling your soul.
Scroll forward a few months and the LIV Golf series has officially arrived. The controversial PGA rival has already attracted notable players such as Mickelson and Dustin Johnson with funding from the Saudi Public Investment Fund. The series, which kicks off this week with its first event in London, has been embroiled in controversy since Mickelson first confirmed his interest.
Meanwhile, the RBC Canadian Open returned this weekend for its 111th edition after two years of COVID-related cancellations. Still, RBC’s chief spokesman for the tournament from previous years, Johnson, was not present. Neither is Mickelson, although he was not a regular at the only stop on the PGA Tour in Canada.
Speaking about the opportunity to star in a series backed by Saudi Arabia earlier this year, Mickelson said: “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter and U.S. resident Jamal] Kashogi and have a terrible experience in human rights. They execute people there for being gay. Knowing all this, why even consider it? Because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the way the PGA Tour works. They managed to cope with the manipulative, coercive tactics with strong hands, because we, the players, had no recourse. Such a nice person [PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan] it looks like unless you have a lever, it will not do what is right. And Saudi money finally gave us that lever. I’m not even sure I want to [the SGL] to succeed, but only the idea of it allows us to do things with [PGA] Tour. ”
The fact that the series can compete with the PGA or give leverage to golfers is not a problem; this is the latest example of sports laundry. Translation: a state or political regime that uses the lure of sport to attract attention and goodwill to cover up and distract from the human rights violations in which they are involved.
We know this: sports laundry is not new. It’s been a long time, but it’s getting more and more obvious and it’s obviously here to stay.
In this case, Saudi Arabia is a nation ruled by an authoritarian regime in which women are treated as second-class citizens. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says he wants to make it “a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and the world.” However, he is linked to various abuses, including the murder of Jamal Kashoghi, a journalist who criticized him.
Although he knew about these well-documented crimes, Phil said the quiet part of his voice. It’s no secret to other golfers in the LIV Golf series.
In the LIV Golf media before his first event this week, Graham McDowell was asked about the sporting nature of the venture and he hit every spot on the BS Bingo map. He said he was not a politician and that he developed the game of golf and that he was a role model for children – all in the same response in which he admitted that he was helping Saudi Arabia in their “journey”. Which opened him up to the point where this “journey” of sports laundry covers up extremely heinous crimes and human rights violations.
Preparing for the start of the Saudi golf series, Graham McDowell spoke of golf as a force for good. I asked how the series, funded by Sovereign Wealth, would help those who have been killed, oppressed and affected by Saudi actions. pic.twitter.com/rtDaetqnG1
– Rob Harris (@RobHarris) June 7, 2022
Until he came across an unconvincing answer, he did find some truth.
“As golfers, if we tried to cure the geopolitical situation in every country in the world where we play golf, we wouldn’t play a lot of golf,” McDowell admitted. So, in a sense, these golfers make the same calculation that many other leagues, teams and sports governing bodies have done: take the money until the opposite reaction makes you lose money.
Players think first of all about the end result. The truth is that every person and every league has a magic number, which makes moral complexities far less complicated – this is obvious in golf and the rest of the sports world.
Augusta National has a history that is problematic, not allowing black or female members for long periods, and yet there was no desire for golfers to refuse prize money to win the Masters. So it is a bit hypocritical when there are no clear rules on where to draw the line of what is and what is not acceptable.
Newcastle United is controlled by the same group behind LIV Golf. As soon as they were bought, the English football club won 10 of its next 15 games and finished in the top half of the Premier League table. When the deal was announced last October, the reaction of the supporters was not shame, but joy when they saw that their club became one of the richest in the world overnight. So can fans criticize these golfers for accepting big checks for Saudi-funded series, but still applauding for a club backed by the same money?
Similarly, Paris Saint-Germain is owned by Qatar’s large sovereign wealth fund.
Qatar is also hosting the upcoming World Cup. To prepare to host the world’s largest football tournament, Qatar has brought in migrant workers who have been forced to work in appalling conditions and whose passports have been confiscated so they cannot leave the country. Thousands of migrant workers have died under these conditions since Qatar won the World Cup in 2010. And we did not even mention the inability of women to participate fully in society and their attitude towards the 2SLGBTQ + community.
The women’s European tour has five events sponsored by Saudi Arabia, but as it is a difficult tour and investment in women’s sports is much needed, the connection with Saudi Arabia in this case did not provoke an internal reaction.
For men, this is not even new to the sport or the region. The Saudi Golf Federation partnered with DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) and founded Saudi International four years ago. In Europe, appearance fees are allowed, so potential LIV deserters – Mickelson, Johnson and Bryson De Chambo – have received seven-figure performance fees to play in Saudi Arabia for years without any problems.
But it was only one tournament a year in Saudi Arabia. LIV Golf already has eight tournaments scheduled, including two on Donald Trump courses with the Trump National Doral Miami final. The association with Trump is controversial in itself.
The truth is that it’s not about being a role model or developing the game for these players. If he doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.
The PGA Tour itself does not offer salaries and guaranteed payouts and does not allow tournaments to pay golfers’ participation fees (although some sponsors pay golfers to appear at certain events and tournaments). The three best careers in the history of the PGA Tour are Tiger Woods ($ 121 million), Mickelson ($ 95 million) and Johnson ($ 74 million).
Greg Norman, CEO of LIV Golf, who also tried to organize a world tour to rival the PGA in the 1990s, said they were offering Tiger Woods nearly $ 1 billion. Johnson was reportedly offered $ 150 million. Mickelson was offered a guaranteed deal of $ 200 million from LIV. After Levi recently revealed about his gambling debts, math tells the story there.
And this is true for everyone involved.
The PGA wanted to keep its monopoly, so it took a firm stand. It has stopped all players who choose to play in the LIV Golf Series, but the USGA will allow players to play next week in their open invitation. Why? Because big players make money. Now we are waiting to see what the other specialties will decide to do. And that will be determined by how angry the audience decides they want to be.
Sponsors also refuse golfers who leave because they do not want their logos to be associated with the negative public sentiment that currently exists with LIV Golf. But do players need as many corporate partners if LIV Golf will guarantee that they will do more than they did before?
Everyone has their own corner.
It seems that the only ones who are not motivated solely by money are the Saudis. Their path to revenue and cost recovery for LIV Golf as a sustainable business model seems less clear. More people will probably watch the videos from the LIV press conference than they will see the real LIV Golf this weekend. They do not have a deal to broadcast in the United States and broadcast their first event on YouTube. None of PGA Tour’s major US media partners, such as NBC or CBS or the Golf Channel, will risk their relationship by broadcasting LIV tournaments.
In a very golf way, everyone tries to judge in which direction the wind is blowing on it to determine if the initial intensity of the outrage will be only short-lived.
And if we look closely at these relationships in sports, should we retain the same energy in other areas of life? Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund also invested billions of dollars in Uber before it went public and bought shares in Boeing, Facebook, Disney and Starbucks, to name a few. Are you an accomplice if you work for these companies? Or if you have stock in these companies or use these products? How far must individuals or corporations go in order to invoke plausible denial?
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