The Saudi-funded Golf League has made a troubled start. As the league’s first tournament kicks off in London on Friday, some questions were asked by some professionals who decided to invest heavily in restoring its global image through sports, a repressive and murderous regime. Let’s see how that has been.
Calling the killing and secession of journalist Jamal Khashoggi “reprehensible”, some of the closest golfers in the league have come out to criticize the Saudi regime. Beyond that, the golfers who spoke today went back to platitudes and clichs about how golf can be a force for good if pressed to explain their participation. When AP reporter Rob Harris followed Graham McDowell to ask how the sovereign asset-financed series would help those killed and oppressed by the Saudi state, McDowell pleaded that he had “the power to make that conversation” but that they were here to “focus on golf.” Has arrived. (As bad as the answer was, it was McDowell One-advanced by Erie Fleischer. Yes, he is involved.)
Professionals, including McDowell and other major winners Dustin Johnson and Louis Ostuizen, generally justified their participation in the league on the basis of doing what was best for their families. They talked about how participating in this league would allow them to spend more time with their families and pursue other interests outside of golf, another way of saying that they certainly can’t say no to a ridiculous pay day.
It’s ridiculous how families often call for criticism in such situations. The strategy is effective on its surface, because no one would argue that anyone should do it Wrong Things for their family, but it also hurts the very point of wanting to make it. When someone like Johnson, who exerted the most force in his position to do what is best for his family, begins to speak in this way, he presents the well-being of his family unit as personal and exists in a completely different and distinct way. Everyone else’s worries and well-being. This same view is adopted by those who refuse to be vaccinated because they oppose the development of sustainable housing “because it is best for their families” or “to protect their families” or because they fight against a fair school rearrangement because they “just want what they want.” Wants. Best for their child. ” These are not personal concerns, but inherently universal issues that affect all sorts of things outside the family unit, which constantly works and communicates with the rest of the world. Admitting such things is inconvenient for golfers who do not want to answer the question of how 81 people were executed in one day a few months ago for sportswashing the interests of their families.