LONDON – Golf champions sit in their chairs at a press conference to promote their new Saudi-funded tournament when a journalist raises the awkward question of registering the oil rights of the oil-rich kingdom . 2010 U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell, for the obvious relief of the players sitting next to him, took over.
“If Saudi Arabia wants to use the game of golf as a way for them to get where they want to go,” McDowell said, “I think we’re proud to help them on this journey.”
This trip, however, is the point: the Saudi-funded project, called the LIV Golf Invitational Series, which begins Thursday at an exclusive club outside London, represents nothing more and nothing less than the hostile acquisition proposal of a whole sport, which takes place in a real way. time, with the best golfers thrown as the prize in a $ 1 billion pull and pull.
Unlike the vain purchase of a European football team or the hosting of a major world sporting event, Saudi Arabia’s foray into the Gulf is not a mere branding exercise, it is no more than an effort. a country to use its wealth to redefine its global image in reputation. cleaning process widely mocked as sports washing.
Instead, Saudi Arabia seeks to take control of the winning golf, or, according to cynics, buy the loyalty of some of the best players in the world. Its strategy has been bold (nine-figure deals, big guaranteed pay days at every event), but it has been geared directly to the structures and organizations that have ruled the gulf for nearly a century.
While the potential for success of the Saudi plan is far from clear: the series does not yet have a television rights agreement or the variety of corporate sponsorships needed to reduce its extravagant start-up costs, its direct appeal to gamers. and its seemingly bottomless financial resources could eventually have repercussions for the 93-year-old PGA Tour, as well as for corporate sponsors and TV stations that have turned professional golf into a multimillion-dollar business.
“It’s a shame the game breaks,” four-time senior champion Rory McIlroy said this week, adding, “If the general public is confused about who is playing where and what tournament this week is, and, ‘Oh, he plays it and doesn’t get into these events’, he gets so confused. “
Professionals who have committed to playing in the first event of the LIV Series this week have tried (not always successfully) to frame their decisions as decisions of principles solely about golf, or as decisions that safeguard the financial future of their families. However, by accepting Saudi wealth in exchange for adding their personal brilliance to their project, they have been placed at the center of a storm in which supporters and human rights groups have questioned their motives; the PGA Tour has threatened them with suspensions; and sponsors and organizations are cutting ties or at least distancing themselves.
All of this has opened up fractures in a sport famous for its decorum, a sport as deeply committed to values as honor and sportsmanship that players are expected to value themselves if they break their rules.
Saudi Arabia, of course, is not the first country to use sport as a platform to harden its global image, to try to change its brand and its economy by focusing attention away from everything from the abuses of human rights to autocratic governance and even terrorist financing. . Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and especially Qatar, which will host the World Cup at the end of the year, have invested heavily in international sports over the past two decades.
But Saudi Arabia’s adventure in the Gulf may be the most ambitious effort to date by a Gulf country to undermine the existing structures of a sport: in fact, it is trying to use its wealth to attract players. far from the most prominent and best tournaments. established golf course, the PGA Tour, creating a whole new league. It’s not that many of the players who took part this week were impatient to talk about these reasons.
McDowell admitted this in his sinuous response to a question that, among other issues, raised the Saudi war in Yemen and the execution of 81 of its citizens in a single day in March. “We’re just here,” he said, “to focus on golf.”
After all, it has been a difficult start. Even before the first ball was hit this week at the Centurion Club on the outskirts of London, the cash-funded LIV series, funded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, had become a lightning rod for controversy. . One of his most important signings, Phil Mickelson, sparked outrage in February when he praised the series as a “unique opportunity in life”, while acknowledging Saudi Arabia’s “horrible” rights record. and used an insult to describe the country’s government as “dangerous”. The project’s main architect, former player Greg Norman, made matters worse a few weeks later when he dismissed the assassination of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia, saying: “Look, we’ve all made mistakes. “.
Most, but not all, of the best players in the world have rejected the concept without a doubt: McIlroy, for example, ridiculed the project as a fundraiser in February. On Wednesday, although he said he understood the motivations of the players who had joined, he made it clear that he would never make the same decision. “If it’s just for money,” McIlroy said, “it never seems to go the way you want.”
Even the rare chances of LIV series players defending their decisions directly to reporters 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 Russia by Vladimir V. Putin or apartheid in South Africa “if the money was right.” The day before, Korean American player Kevin Na was caught with a live microphone saying, “This is awkward,” while his press conference ended with a British journalist shouting about the moderator.
Despite repeated storms, many of the players who arrived in London this week for the first event in the series, the most lucrative golf tournament in history, seemed unprepared for tough interrogations. Several tried to divert questions by saying that they were only golfers or by optimistic speculation that golf was a force for good in the world. But some also stumbled upon being asked how these values fit into selling their talents to Saudi Arabia as part of efforts to clean up their image through their sudden and spectacular embrace of sports.
In a particularly awkward exchange, a lineup with three big winners (McDowell, Dustin Johnson, and Louis Oosthuizen) retaliated over who should address a question that included references to the treatment of women and homosexuals in Saudi Arabia.
Most players, however, seem to have concluded that the money was too good to pass up. The $ 150 million incentive reported to Johnson, the top-ranked player to jump into the new series, would be more than double the total awards he has won on tour during his career. The cash prize offered to the last Centurion qualifier this week is $ 120,000, which is $ 120,000 more than the last one at a PGA Tour event. Meanwhile, the $ 4 million check for the winner is three times the share of the winner offered at this week’s PGA Tour event, the Canadian Open.
Money, in fact, may be LIV Golf’s biggest attraction right now: two more great champions, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed, were said to be close to accepting equally large pay days to join. in the series when it moves to the United States this summer. , including a visit to New Jersey for the first of two events scheduled at Donald Trump-owned courses.
Saudi Arabia’s embrace of the Gulf is part of a much broader and more aggressive approach to sport as a means for the kingdom to achieve the ambitious political and economic goals of its de facto leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Similar controversies involving Saudi interests have already haunted other sports, such as boxing, car racing and especially international football.
But where previous Gulf ambitions often take the form of an investment in a sport, the sudden push in the Gulf by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth entity, the Public Investment Fund, seems to seem a brazen assault with the intent of controlling an entire sport, in any case. cost. Tiger Woods, for example, turned down nearly $ 1 billion to participate in the LIV Series, and at least other prominent stars have had their heads turned.
Undoubtedly, the most prominent, and perhaps the most controversial, figure to join the series is Mickelson, a six-time major champion who was for years one of the most popular and marketable players on the PGA Tour. He did not hide the fact that his interest was linked to his contempt for the PGA Tour, which he accused of “unpleasant greed”.
Accused of rumored criticism of his headline comments about Saudi Arabia earlier this year, and the decisions of several of his sponsors to break ties with him, Mickelson reappeared on public stage on Wednesday, but she refused to give details of her relationship with him. LIV or discuss the PGA. “I think the contractual arrangements should be private,” said Mickelson, who is reportedly receiving $ 200 million to participate.
Still, it is unlikely that any hope that Mickelson, his new colleagues, or his new Saudi financiers would have had the narrative quickly change into action over the course of the year.
“I don’t notice human rights violations at all,” Mickelson said at one of the most awkward press conference moments of a week full of them.
Shortly afterwards, dressed in shorts and a windbreaker, he went to the first tee, where he and a member of the board of the Public Investment Fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, led the inaugural group of the first series LIV …