Seth Wenig/AP Photo
From left: Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund; former President Donald Trump; Greg Norman, LIV Golf CEO; and Majed Al-Sorour, CEO of Golf Saudi, watch the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, New Jersey, July 30, 2022.
Professional golf has always been a peculiarly Republican sport. Rooted in the world of country clubs, and hence of traditional local civic establishments, of duffer CEOs and surgeons who slice, it grooms young men (we’re not talking about the LPGA here) to the mores of the upper echelons of the business world.
That’s the vibe, but the numbers back it up. My first exposure to the politics of the PGA Tour came just after the 1972 presidential election, when a survey of PGA pros showed that more than 300 of them had voted for Richard Nixon and exactly one had voted for George McGovern. Since then, the pros have become more demographically diverse, but their politics have remained on the right. As this week’s submission to the siren call of Saudi wealth makes lamentably clear.
So much for this make-it-in-America nonsense. Like the corporate executives who’ve always loved to play alongside the Greg Normans, Arnold Palmers, Ben Hogans, and Bobby Joneses in Pro-Am tournaments, the allure of big bucks from overseas—even if it means cozying up to the occasional barbarous dictator—has proved irresistible. Offshoring to China (almost all of which came after Tiananmen Square)? Legitimating Mohammed bin Salman in return for bigger bucks (never mind the imprisoned dissidents and the dismembered journalist)? When you focus on the bottom line, such moral concerns float happily away.
That said, the CEOs at least can cloak their lust for self-enrichment in professions of concern for their shareholders. Golf pros can make no such claims. The Saudi royal’s riyals trickle down no further than the pros themselves. (Well, I suppose they’ll also enrich the PR firms being hired to make this deal appear less nauseating than it actually is.)
By agreeing to dismiss all moral and political concerns about MBS, the PGA is merely replicating the Republican establishment’s submission to and embrace of Donald Trump and his incendiary bigotry. Then again, the PGA has always been the pro-sports wing of the Republican establishment (just as the stock car racing circuit has been the pro-sports wing of white nationalism). Schooled as they were in country-club values, the pros were steeled to never sell out—until the price was right.
