The LIV Golf tournament is scheduled to tee off its U.S. tour Thursday at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, a week after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — whose oil- and blood-soaked Public Investment Fund created LIV five years ago — announced it would pull out. The Saudis created LIV as a rival to the PGA Tour and reportedly burned at least $5 billion on it, but now they are leaving LIV to fend without their help.
Where better to prop up what remains of the tournament than a Trump-owned property in a suburb of our nation’s capital? In other words, the tournament will be played virtually in the lap of the Saudis’ biggest apologist after U.S. intelligence implicated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Where better to prop up what remains of the tournament than a Trump-owned property in a suburb of our nation’s capital?
The kingdom has fomented a yearslong war against Yemen that has killed or contributed to the deaths of more than 250,000 people while creating arguably the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Saudi Arabia is also the birthplace of 15 of the 19 men who carried out the 9/11 attack. Despite that indisputable fact, when Americans who lost loved ones in the attack criticized President Donald Trump for hosting a LIV tournament on one of his properties four years ago, he said, “Well, nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately, and they should have.”
Trump can’t shake his Saudi infatuation.
Indeed, The Washington Post reported the day Trump went to war with Iran that the Saudi crown prince helped convince Trump to launch the attack. More than five weeks later, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed and upward of 400 have been injured.
Domestic and foreign economies have been wrecked by the war from higher fuel prices due to oil exports trapped in the Strait of Hormuz from a retaliatory U.S. blockade in response to Iran’s threatening of tankers trying to make it to the Indian Ocean and beyond. Iran further responded by striking its oil-producing Arab neighbors who are U.S. allies — most notably the United Arab Emirates, Dubai and Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel. The spreading regional war early on trapped at least eight LIV golfers in the Middle East, where they were practicing before LIV’s Hong Kong event.
It all led to the Saudis announcing last week that they would pull out of funding LIV. Saudi Arabia’s deal with the women’s tennis tour, the WTA, has wrapped up. An F1 race in Saudi Arabia and a Fanatics flag football extravaganza there have also been canceled.
In the wake of Trump’s unsanctioned war against Iran, the Saudis are reportedly focusing on domestic concerns and ending their strategy of attempting to cleanse their international reputation through investing in sports around the world.
LIV has canceled its June tournament in New Orleans. But it limped into Virginia for this week’s date — at the course owned by the crown prince’s phone buddy, Trump, who last year feted him at the White House. That is, Trump celebrated the crown prince just a few blocks from the Post, where Khashoggi worked. The journalist was murdered in October 2018 inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where he was tricked into a meeting. U.S. intelligence assessed the crown prince orchestrated the killing, adding to the Saudi government’s reputation of moral bankruptcy.
LIV wasn’t the first golf entity to sleep with immoral bedfellows.
But what does LIV, which was created four years later, care? LIV is not the first golf entity to sleep with immoral bedfellows. In the 1980s, when apartheid in South Africa was at its height, carts full of the world’s best golfers — Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Seve Ballesteros, Lee Trevino and even Lee Elder, the first Black golfer to play the Masters — accepted bags of South African rands to play at the Sun City Resort and Casino.
On Tuesday, LIV golfer Bryson DeChambeau, an adoring fan of the president, joined lickspittle Cabinet secretaries Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Linda McMahon and Scott Turner, along with several children pulled into a photo op, to witness Trump signing some sort of memorandum on youth fitness.
DeChambeau, who arrived in Washington for the Virginia tournament, is a Trump brand ambassador. He has said he will stick with LIV after exploring a ramp back to the PGA, which he sued along with 10 other players after it suspended them for joining LIV. Some LIV golfers have or are negotiating a return to the PGA, which has imposed some penalty for their defection. Even so, Trump, who embraced LIV after the PGA pulled tournaments from his properties following his adherents’ Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, is all about reuniting LIV golfers with their old brethren. Maybe because the PGA returned to Trump’s Doral club in Florida last week.
All of which is why I’m not inclined to join the chorus of cheers over the cloudy future of LIV because the villainous Saudis backed out. The Saudis have their reasons, whatever they may be.
The givolf world, and the worlds of other sports, have accepted Saudi money knowing it was filthy, even bloody, lucre. If there were to be a divorce between the sports world and the Saudis, the sports world should have initiated the breakup. There never should have been a marriage at all if sports is about, among other virtues, fairness.
But the sports world is not the party that filed for divorce. It’s just accepting it. And that betrayal of decency and values should never be forgotten.
Kevin B. Blackistone is a longtime national sports columnist and professor of the practice at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.