Controversy, questions surround PGA Tour/PIF

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”  -- Buckminster Fuller (1896-1983), architect, creator of the geodesic dome.

Following the June 6 stunning announcement of the of the alliance between the PGA Tour and the $650 billion Saudi sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF), backers of LIV Golf, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan explained to the press that “circumstances change.” They certainly have. Monahan then added, “We just realized we were better off together than we were fighting or apart.”

So, weeks after that news shook the golf world, it is now known the PGA Tour determined the mounting monetary toll of litigations, along with the expenditure of designated tour events and player incentives, were financially unsustainable. That, coupled with the Saudis’ reluctance to open their PIF books to the world through the “discovery” process, created an avenue for candid discussion. At this point, the alliance is only a “framework agreement” with many, many questions and details to be ironed out. Just as the introduction of the airplane and tank in World War I changed the nature of the battlefield, the reality of a new world order means that the professional game of golf has been forever changed.

There are many who decry the agreement on moral grounds, notably Saudi Arabia’s ties to the 9/11 attacks in which all of the planes were hijacked by Saudi nationals, as well as the outcry of that nation’s abysmal human rights record.

Then there’s the matter of sportswashing.

The PGA Tour/PIF agreement has now drawn the attention of the Department of Justice and Congress. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D.-Conn.) released this statement just after the Tour’s announcement: “The PGA Tour has placed a price on human rights and betrayed the long history of sports and athletes that advocate for social change and progress. I will keep a close eye on the structure of this deal and its implications.”

Both Golfweek writer Eamon Lynch and Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee have come out strongly criticizing the agreement as total hypocrisy.

In an open letter to Commissioner Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour’s Board and fellow tour players, World Golf Hall of Famer Tom Watson wrote: “Please educate me and others in a way that allows loyalty to both (golf and country) in a way that makes it easy to look 9/11 families in the eye and ourselves in the mirror.” Sports Illustrated’s Michael Rosenberg writes, “The future of men’s professional golf hinges on whether specific moral questions matter.” Or are set aside, since circumstances change in a hurry.

Commissioner Monahan recently said he met with several members of Congress to discuss LIV’s entry into golf in the U.S. and suggested ways that lawmakers could support the PGA Tour in that battle. On June 9 Monahan sent a letter to Congress which read in part: “Over the past two years the PGA Tour has fought an intense and highly publicized battle as the Saudi Arabian PIF-backed LIV golf league attempted to ‘buy’ PGA Tour players and take over the game of golf … we were largely left on our own to fend off the attacks, ostensibly due to (our) complex geopolitical alliance with the Kingdom.”

All of that said, there are many other major questions in the 22 years post-9/11, which I haven’t noticed being discussed. Yes, in those intervening years, circumstances changed. Saudi Arabia is by far our biggest military arms customer, with us supplying F-15 fighter jets, Black Hawk helicopters, tanks and artillery. In the past two decades our arms sales may have even surpassed the PIF fortune. Nobody is protesting outside the Pentagon gates. A substantial portion of our country’s Fortune 500 corporations do big business with the Saudis, and have for the past half-century. Nobody is lining up with protest signs in front of General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics or Coca-Cola headquarters. 

It seems to be just fine with Congress that big companies do business with the Saudis, but when our sacred golf institution tries it, Oh that’s a different story. And then there are the massive investments in U.S. companies and land by the Saudis and the PIF itself. Nobody is carrying protest signs in front of the New York Stock Exchange.

I detect some hypocrisy all the way around, but especially in government.