If you thought this sport would come through here, on this topic, at this time, well, why? Golf has never led from the front, rarely-to-never taken a stand, always doing just enough to get by in the eye of the glut of software companies and high-end watch brands that pay the bills. Thoughtful, meaningful responses to questions about societal issues of importance do not pay out one-to-one in Wheels Up miles, so why bother?
You should have expected the world’s best golfers to take Saudi Arabia’s money
Golf is often on the wrong side of history, and many of the world’s best players patronizing the first ever event in Saudi Arabia this week is the latest blunder.
On one side of the globe this weekend, the PGA Tour will gather together with 250,000 32-year-old insurance wholesalers named Chad to drink domestic lights et al in Scottsdale, Arizona. It will be distastefully boorish, assuredly problematic, and also golf’s best attempt at an accessible event for the everyman. It is The People’s Open, of course. But if nothing else, it’s at least an attempt at reaching the masses and democratizing a game that can sometimes seem aloof and out-of-touch from the average America.
There’s also another golf tournament this week. The European Tour will make its debut in Saudi Arabia, with four of the world’s top five players at the moment in tow. The tournament organizers, i.e. the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, paid pros like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Justin Rose, and Patrick Reed a definitely-large-but-not-disclosed appearance fee just to show up at the inaugural event. This practice is outlawed on the PGA Tour, but not on the European Tour, which has a set of tournaments in the Middle East renowned for paying out hefty figures just to get some American stars to show up to their event. Tiger Woods reportedly turned down an appearance fee that exceeded $3 million for this Saudi International event.
This is the Saudi Kingdom, of course, led Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the CIA concluded ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last October. This is the Saudi Kingdom with a horrible human rights record that includes a history of torture and execution.
Responses to any mention of those events and choosing to tee it up in Saudi Arabia went about as expected.
“I’m not a politician, I’m a golfer,” said world No. 1 Justin Rose.
“I’m going over there to play a sport I’m paid to play,” said Dustin Johnson. “It’s my job to play golf.”
Koepka did not want to address it in any meaningful way, saying “All these places, there’s a bit of conflict if you want to get into it. I’m not going to get into it.”
Sure, yes. Let’s first address the obvious and timely absurdity of playing a golf tournament in Saudi Arabia, a nation with a long list of human rights abuses. There’s Khashoggi’s still not-fully-resolved murder, the crisis in Yemen, the treatment of LGBTQ rights advocates — pick whatever you’d like. There should not be an internationally-sanctioned golf tournament here, period. Not when any of the long known evergreen reasons to avoid the Saudi kingdom exist. Certainly not when the current regime is a link between this golf tournament and the geopolitical implications of the murder of a U.S.-residing journalist. Definitely not when these players will be used to help the Saudis promote some normalized image of their country.
The European Tour has led the charge in bringing golf to new and unique markets, but the establishment of this event is and should always be a black mark on Euro Tour CEO Keith Pelley’s tenure.
But, again, what did you expect? Did you expect them not to take the check? Koepka or DeChambeau or Reed to speak out against Mohammed bin Salman from within the borders of the Kingdom? Hell, these are the guys we can hardly get to chime in on a U.S. presidential election unless you’re scrolling favorited tweets. This is the cognitive dissonance tour, where most everyone would pretend to live in a Wheels Up-procured vacuum where decisions like taking a fat check from the Saudis don’t have an affect on anything else beyond FedExCup points.
And that’s golf, and this is what it’s always been — there’s no need to kid ourselves. Despite the inextricable link between sports and politics, the Tours and the professional golfers that occupy them by and large have not ever wanted a thing to do with such an intersection.
This is the sport where Woods is the model, and every player has 16-some handlers trying to distill him into some marketing-like paste for a Big Four accounting firm. No one wants to reflect on Clifford Roberts’ well-documented history of racism at Augusta, or the PGA awarding a major championship to President Donald Trump, or the lack of black American players on the PGA Tour 20-plus years after Woods first entered the scene. Those are hard questions that require some sort of reflection, some sort of thought, some sort of empathy. Hell, as the weeks go on and the headlines mount, perhaps those are qualities that just don’t exist in professional golf.
Englishman Paul Casey, a UNICEF ambassador, did politely announce he would “sit this one out.” Woods passed on the appearance fee, although it’s not clear if that had anything do with the host country’s human rights record or having to take a flight around the world in the middle of the PGA Tour’s West Coast swing, where he’s started his 2019.
No one is going to force any professional golfer to speak up on social and political issues of importance. No one is going to force them to step into an uncomfortable spot, or to hold progressive views on social change and justice that don’t align with most of the Tour’s worldview.
But not taking a fat appearance check from Saudi Arabia after the Khashoggi murder? Yes, absolutely, you’re going to face questions and criticism and you should have to deliver some sort of cogent and thoughtful answer. Hand-wringing with the well-I’m-not-a-politician stuff when there’s a check in your hand and your image will assuredly be used as propaganda for an oppressive regime is not good enough.
But again, this is pro golf. What did we expect?
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