Only days after football fans raised a banner condemning Newcastle United’s association with Saudi Arabia, complete with a man with a sword and the letters “PIF” on his robe, Greg Norman has emerged as the kingdom’s new flag-bearer.
The two-times Open champion, 66, was unveiled last week as the new chief executive of LIV Golf Investments, majority owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). Last week it announced a $200 million (about £150 million) ten-tournament, decade-long addendum to the Asian Tour, played in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, and Norman warned: “This is only the beginning.”
A super-exclusive media briefing, with only five friendly outlets, was held in New York last week, and golf chiefs are now braced for another power struggle, with Norman due to become the commissioner of a Saudi-backed breakaway league due to start in 2022.
The tie-up is controversial given the kingdom’s human rights record, but Norman struck a defiant note in an interview with Golf Digest. After saying people should not make “judgmental calls” without visiting Saudi, he added: “Women’s rights issues — the women there now, I’ve been impressed. You walk into a restaurant and there are women. They’re not wearing burkas. They’re out playing golf.”
Those appalled by Saudi Arabia’s involvement in football and golf say the PIF is being used to whitewash the kingdom’s reputation and deflect from its human rights issues. That backlash has intensified since a United Nations special rapporteur said there was credible evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the PIF chairman, ordered the 2018 murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. That claim has been denied. Amnesty has also highlighted the treatment of women who face “discrimination in law and practice in relation to marriage, divorce and inheritance, as well as receiving inadequate protection against violence”. The campaigning organisation also says that domestic abuse victims need a male guardian’s permission to leave shelters.
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When the PIF bought Newcastle, the Premier League stressed that it had legally binding assurances that the Saudi state would not be the de facto operators. Regarding the PIF involvement in golf, Norman said: “They’re very autonomous. They make investment decisions all around the world. They’ve invested in major US corporations because of commercial reasons. They invested in LIV Golf Investments for a commercial opportunity. They’re passionate about the game of golf.”
However, the PIF is Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, now Newcastle’s chairman, is governor of the fund and also chairman of the Saudi Golf Federation and Aramco, the state-backed oil company that has just reported net third-quarter results of $30.4 billion. Aramco are the sponsors of this week’s Saudi Ladies International in Jeddah featuring the British players Georgia Hall, Charley Hull and Laura Davies.
Talk of rebel leagues and $50 million contracts is nothing new in golf. Earlier this year the Saudi-backed Super Golf League was dangling mind-boggling numbers in front of players. Rory McIlroy said that he “didn’t like where the money was coming from” and likened it to football’s ill-fated European Super League. “A money-grab,” he said. Lee Westwood said that a mega contract at his age would constitute a “no-brainer”. Players were threatened with bans from the PGA Tour and the Ryder Cup and it faded into the background, but not away.
Meanwhile, the unrelated Premier Golf League bosses are still waiting for a reply to their latest outline plan sent to the PGA Tour in late September. The PGL is backed by World Golf Group with an assortment of international, but not Saudi, companies, and individuals. The Raine Group, the venture capitalists who failed to seal a partnership deal with the European Tour in 2020, own 24 per cent. The PGL chiefs said that they wanted to launch an 18-stop series in 2023 with a team element and £14 million weekly purses.
The PGL is offering PGA Tour members 50 per cent ownership, which they say will be worth $20 million a player by 2029. A briefing document claims: “Barring the emergence of Tiger Woods, the PGL could be the best thing to happen to members of the PGA Tour since its formation in 1968.”
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Keen to pursue a collaborative approach, they say there would be “no cliff edge, no bans, no threat to players’ pensions or (world ranking) points”. They also say there would be no scheduling clashes. The PGA Tour has not replied.
The PGA Tour bosses may be more worried about LIV Golf Investments’ move into the Asian Tour which was clearly a stepping stone rather than the endgame, and will enable them to offer a feeder system and world ranking points. Details of which players will be involved and which courses will be used — Trump Turnberry is under consideration — remain sketchy, but Norman is now the public face and receiving a reported seven-figure salary.
The PGA Tour, which signed a strategic alliance with the European Tour last year, still has heavy weapons to fend off any challenge even if bans may not stand up in court. They have media rights deals with their members, while players wanting to play elsewhere need to apply for releases. Eight players, believed to include Dustin Johnson, Lee Westwood and Justin Rose, have asked for waivers to play in next year’s Saudi International, a European Tour event until this year but now set to become the flagship tournament on the Asian Tour.
The European Tour cannot take the high ground over Saudi Arabia given its past association, and this week’s tournament in Saudi Arabia is being played under the Ladies European Tour banner. Lydia Ko, the former world No 1 and two-times major champion, said: “I know the impact this event had with Saudi girls last year with more than 1,000 signing-up to learn to play, so it sounds like I’ll be playing somewhere that’s really starting to fall in love with golf.”
