Saudi-backed golf upstart tour is tearing golf world apart

Critics claim Saudi Arabia is using the tour to try and “sportswash” its reputation

Today's expression: Pass up
July 4, 2022:

An upstart league called LIV Golf is disrupting the tranquility that has long defined professional golf. The decision to join – or not join – the tour has torn the golf world into two. The tour is offering some of the world’s best players enormous sums of money to play, but there is controversy surrounding where exactly that money is coming from. Plus, learn “pass up.”

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Murder, greed, and scandal. Wait, I thought today’s topic was going to be golf?

Lesson summary

Hi there everyone, it’s Jeff and this is Plain English Lesson number 482 on July 4, 2022. Independence Day here in the United States, as we celebrate our 246th birthday. Check out Lesson 62 to learn how we celebrate the Fourth of July.

Coming up today: There’s a wedge in professional golf—and I don’t mean a pitching wedge or a sand wedge. There’s a split in the sport, between players who’ve entered a new tournament and those who are staying behind. And it’s all tied up in global politics, greed, with a side of murder and torture. Yes, again, this is golf we’re talking about.

In the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you how to use the phrasal verb “pass up.” And we have a quote of the week; this one is from Bill Gates. Let’s get going.

Golf world split by upstart league

It is often said that golf is the “gentlemen’s game.” With very limited exceptions, you don’t see golfers use profane language or get angry with other people on the course. You don’t see them break their clubs. They don’t tend to get into bar fights, they’re not involved in shootings, there are very few allegations of domestic abuse—again, with limited exceptions. Where in other sports, cheating is encouraged or at least tolerated, it’s prohibited in golf and the players respect the rules.

Brands feel safe endorsing golfers because, again with limited exception, they tend to be free of scandals that often mar athletes in other sports. The PGA Tour organizes most, but not all, of the golf tournaments on American television. The PGA Tour tends to be a very gentlemanly organization that prizes tradition and respect. But the tranquility of professional golf has been shattered, thanks to an upstart league called LIV Golf.

The controversy is that this new league is backed by the government of Saudi Arabia. Several organizations that study human rights rank Saudi Arabia among the worst abusers in the world.

This is the same government that was behind the assassination of a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, which you heard about in Lesson 97 . In Saudi Arabia, women face harsh discrimination; they make up only five percent of the workforce and don’t have the same civil rights as men. Homosexuality is illegal. Political speech is restricted. Torture is common for political opponents of the government. Punishment is extremely harsh: people who commit adultery can be put to death, by beheading, firing squad, or by other gruesome measures.

The Saudi government is attempting to change its reputation as a harsh abuser of human rights—not by, you know, stopping the abuse of human rights, but by staging large events that distract people from its record. So it started its own golf league.

LIV Golf, which is spelled L-I-V, is named after the Roman numerals that make up the number 54, the total number of holes that are played in a LIV Golf tournament. Most professional golf tournaments are four rounds of 18 holes each; the LIV tournaments feature just three rounds of 18 holes, for 54 in total. In this, its first year, there are eight tournaments: five in the United States, one in England, one in Thailand, and one in Saudi Arabia itself.

But a golf league would be of no use to Saudi Arabia without famous golfers playing in the tournaments. So to attract golfers, the league offered direct guaranteed payments to some famous players.

The payments are eye-popping. Let me put this in perspective. Most golfers make money by winning championships. If you win, you get a lot of money. If you come near the top, you get some good money too. If you finish near the bottom, you get only a little or nothing at all.

LIV Golf offers richer payoffs, including higher prizes for winners and a minimum payout of $120,000 even for a last-place finish. And the tour dangled lucrative guaranteed payments to lure the sport’s biggest stars into the tournaments.

Take Phil Mickelson, nicknamed “Lefty,” and one of the most popular players in the sport. In his thirty-year career, has won $95 million in prize money—a nice career. He has earned the second-most prize money of all time, after Tiger Woods. Ninety-five million dollars over a thirty-year career. Saudi Arabia’s league paid him $200 million just to play in eight tournaments this year and ten next year.

Dustin Johnson has won $74 million in prize money in his career; he’s getting $150 million from the Saudis, again just to play in these tournaments, not to win, just to play. Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, and Ian Poulter also signed onto the new league.

The decision to join—or not join—has torn golf apart, leaving golfers on either side of a nasty divide. On the one side, some players get to increase their earnings and play less, but the money comes from a tainted source. On the other side, players may make less money and stay with the traditional tournaments.

Mickelson explained his decision succinctly: he wanted to disrupt the game of golf and join an upstart league that could, he said, be better for golfers in the long run by paying players more. And, he said, although he didn’t like the human rights record of Saudi Arabia, this opportunity was too good to pass up . Dustin Johnson said he was doing it for his “family.” This is barely disguised code for, he’s doing it for the money.

Blowback on Mickelson, Johnson, and others was swift. They were accused of helping Saudi Arabia “sportswash” its reputation. These players, critics feel, are helping Saudi Arabia clean up its horrid reputation just by paying money to host sporting events. By taking the money, many fans feel, these players are complicit in Saudi Arabia’s behavior.

Longtime sponsors dropped their affiliations with LIV tour golfers. The PGA Tour suspended the players who went to this new league. While Mickelson, Johnson, and others can enter some tournaments, they’ll be barred from joining the majority of North American tournaments this year.

Golfers who didn’t join the new league had some criticism for those who jumped ship: Rory McIlroy said he didn’t see why they would tarnish their reputations for “extra millions,” especially after having earned so much.

Saying the quiet parts out loud

There’s a viewpoint that people in sports have been doing this for a long time. The Olympics in China, the World Cup in Qatar , the Saudi government owning Newcastle United in the English Premier League, all the other Russian oligarchs or Middle Eastern princes who own soccer teams, whatever.

And there’s always this sense in the background that people sell their teams to these guys, or they put a tournament in a place, because the money is too good. Human rights are a real problem in Qatar, too, especially for all the migrant workers who build the stadiums in this empty, scorching desert.

But this is rarely said out loud. FIFA didn’t say, “We put the World Cup in Qatar because they bribed us to do it.” And football team owners don’t say, “Sure, your beloved local team will be owned by a Russian oligarch now, and that’s terrible, but at least I got a lot of money.”

People don’t say that. You know it’s true, but it’s unspoken. Well here, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, they basically came right out and said they’re doing it for the money and they don’t care about where the money came from. And that part, the saying it out loud, is why people are more upset about this than, say, the Olympics in China or the 2014 Olympics in Russia or whatever. Oh boy.

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Expression: Pass up