Silence on human rights shows that golfers know price of putting and value of nothing

The US Senate hearing on the proposed merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf last week opened with a biting, quietly fuming address by Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic senator for Connecticut. A lawyer by training and a former attorney general in his home state, Senator Blumenthal spoke eloquently for more than 14 minutes, only occasionally glancing down at the script he had prepared.

Without delay, he came to the point: “Today’s hearing is about much more than the game of golf,” he said. “It is about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence, indeed even take over, a cherished American institution to cleanse its public image ... It’s also about hypocrisy. How vast sums of money can induce institutions and individuals to betray their own values and supporters, or perhaps reveal a lack of values from the beginning.”

Later in his remarks Blumenthal included himself among the betrayed. When the PGA Tour were scouting for allies on Capitol Hill, during their early skirmishes with LIV Golf, they reached out to the senator. He pledged his support “on the promise, and commitment, of maintaining the PGA Tour as an independent, cherished, American institution”.

Senator Blumenthal portrayed the conflict between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, and the deal with the devil that is on the table now, in idealised terms, as if it was a morality play. In his eyes, one organisation represented a certain set of pillar values, holding up the kind of society we take for granted in the western world; and the other organisation represented values that ought to be abhorrent to any right-minded person. Duelling opposites.

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In that context, he raised a “non-disparagement” clause that was inserted into the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf on the night before their forced marriage was announced. Effectively it was a gagging order.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen to players who may want to speak out about Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses,” he said.

In the course of the hearing this matter was raised with Ron Price, the PGA Tour’s chief operating officer, and he was unequivocal: “We do not plan on enforcing anything against our players,” he said. “They are free to speak their mind.”

[ Amnesty International urges Ronaldo to highlight human rights issues in Saudi Arabia ]

The principle of free speech clearly has more traction in the United States than it does in Saudi Arabia, where dissidence is a hazardous pursuit. But even if the non-disparagement clause never comes into force, which PGA Tour golfer has any plans to speak out? Which one of them has any mind to condemn Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women, and the LGBTQI+ community, and it’s various human rights abuses?

So far, the nearest thing to criticism dropped from the corner of Phil Mickelson’s mouth, LIV’s first poster boy signing. He spoke to the golf writer Alan Shipnuck shortly before his copy deadline for an unauthorised biography of Mickelson, and subsequently claimed that is was private conversation; Shipnuck is adamant that it was an on-the-record interview, and Mickelson’s remarks were included in the book.

“They’re scary motherf***ers to get involved with,” he said. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter, Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay.”

Mickelson swiftly apologised to his paymasters.

Rory McIlroy has been the most vocal and consistent critic of LIV Golf, but his reservations have not dwelt on moral issues. Early in 2020, before LIV got off the ground, he was the first player to speak out forcibly against it. Among other things, he said he “didn’t like where the money was coming from,” a thinly veiled reference to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund [PIF]. That seemed like a principled stance.

In an interview in July 2022, however, he expressed a more nuanced view. “I understand people’s reservations with everything,” McIlroy said, “but at the same time, if these people are serious about investing billions of dollars into golf, I think ultimately that’s a good thing – but it has to be done in the right way.

“If they were to invest, have it be invested inside of the existing structures, and I think that’s the thing I’ve tried to advocate for in these last few months. I think at this point, if people are wanting to spend that much money in the game of golf, that’s wonderful. I just wish that we could have got to a point where they were spending that money within the existing structure instead of being this big disrupter.”

McIlroy has repeatedly said that he “hates” LIV Golf. When it emerged in the senate hearing last week that the Saudis had pitched a proposal for Tiger Woods and McIlroy to play in 10 LIV events, McIlroy doubled down on his revulsion. He said that if LIV was the last tour on earth he would “retire” from tournament golf and just play in the Majors. His views on LIV are not in any doubt; his opinion on what Senator Blumenthal described as “a brutal, repressive regime” are not in the public domain.

He is not alone. Other high-profile PGA Tour players – who had far less courage than McIlroy on the LIV issue – have ducked that critical part of the conversation too. It should be the only thing that matters.

[ Give Me a Crash Course in ... the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger ]

One of the first issues that arose after PIF’s hostile takeover of the PGA Tour – for that’s what it is – was compensation for the high-profile players who had turned down big inducements to stay put. Think about that: compensation for not taking tainted, “sportswashing” money. For doing the right thing in the first place.

In a letter to the PGA Tour board and its enfeebled commissioner Jay Monahan, Tom Watson tried to introduce an element of conscience. The questions he had about the financial future of the tour, he wrote last month, were “compounded by the hypocrisy in disregarding the moral issue”. Whatever the resuscitated numbers will say when the deal goes through, the PGA Tour has reached a state of bankruptcy.

“PGA Tour players are role models,” said Senator Blumenthal last week. “They are ambassadors of our values.” If so, where was the chorus of moral outrage at what Saudi Arabia was trying to achieve by poisoning golf’s bloodstream?

The senator strained in his efforts to portray golf’s civil war as a fight between good and evil, as if this fight had a soul. All it had was a black heart.