Controversy, but louder: Stenson’s LIV Golf title takes backseat in Trumpland
Bryan Armen Graham at Trump National Golf Club - THE GUARDIAN
It didn’t take long for Henrik Stenson’s decision to join the Saudi-funded LIV Golf Invitational Series to pay off handsomely.
Less than a fortnight after the even-keeled Swede was stripped of Europe’s Ryder Cup captaincy with immediate effect for defecting to the controversial Saudi-backed breakaway circuit on a reported $50m signing fee, Stenson carded a final-round 69 on Sunday afternoon to win LIV Golf’s third event by two shots over Dustin Johnson and Matthew Wolff at Trump National Golf Club in the leafy New Jersey township of Bedminster 45 miles west of New York City.
“I guess we can agree I played like a captain,” said Stenson, who brought home $4m for beating the field and an additional $375,000 for his team’s second-place finish, eye-watering sums that helped compensate for the withering criticism he’s endured since reneging on a March pledge upon accepting the captain’s post to fully support the DP Tour.
“I think there might have been a little bit of extra motivation in there this week,” he added. “When we as players have that, I think we can bring out the good stuff. I guess that’s been a bit of a theme over the course of my career, I think, when I really want something I manage to dig a little bit deeper, and a lot of times we manage to make it happen.”
On the surface it hit all the notes of a feel-good narrative: a hard-won return to the winner’s circle for a 46-year-old ranked 173rd in the world who hasn’t been there often since his record-breaking triumph at the 2016 Open. But as Stenson accepted the trophy alongside Donald Trump during a pyrotechnic-peppered ceremony that was curiously omitted from the official broadcast, while Donald Trump Jr declared it “the greatest F/U in the history of Golf”, a gnawing sense of tedium prevailed that not even the post-game Chainsmokers concert near the 10th hole could dispel.
The opprobrium that has come to define the upstart circuit bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund was only magnified at the Bedminster golf club owned by a former US president whose role in fueling the US Capitol riot remains under investigation by a House select committee. Controversy, but louder.
Trump sucked up the spotlight throughout the proceedings, consistently drawing the biggest crowds of the weekend as he watched the competition from a custom-built terrace along the 16th tee with a rotating cast of VIPs that on Sunday included Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson and far-right firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Bryan Armen Graham at Trump National Golf Club - THE GUARDIAN
It didn’t take long for Henrik Stenson’s decision to join the Saudi-funded LIV Golf Invitational Series to pay off handsomely.
Less than a fortnight after the even-keeled Swede was stripped of Europe’s Ryder Cup captaincy with immediate effect for defecting to the controversial Saudi-backed breakaway circuit on a reported $50m signing fee, Stenson carded a final-round 69 on Sunday afternoon to win LIV Golf’s third event by two shots over Dustin Johnson and Matthew Wolff at Trump National Golf Club in the leafy New Jersey township of Bedminster 45 miles west of New York City.
“I guess we can agree I played like a captain,” said Stenson, who brought home $4m for beating the field and an additional $375,000 for his team’s second-place finish, eye-watering sums that helped compensate for the withering criticism he’s endured since reneging on a March pledge upon accepting the captain’s post to fully support the DP Tour.
“I think there might have been a little bit of extra motivation in there this week,” he added. “When we as players have that, I think we can bring out the good stuff. I guess that’s been a bit of a theme over the course of my career, I think, when I really want something I manage to dig a little bit deeper, and a lot of times we manage to make it happen.”
On the surface it hit all the notes of a feel-good narrative: a hard-won return to the winner’s circle for a 46-year-old ranked 173rd in the world who hasn’t been there often since his record-breaking triumph at the 2016 Open. But as Stenson accepted the trophy alongside Donald Trump during a pyrotechnic-peppered ceremony that was curiously omitted from the official broadcast, while Donald Trump Jr declared it “the greatest F/U in the history of Golf”, a gnawing sense of tedium prevailed that not even the post-game Chainsmokers concert near the 10th hole could dispel.
The opprobrium that has come to define the upstart circuit bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund was only magnified at the Bedminster golf club owned by a former US president whose role in fueling the US Capitol riot remains under investigation by a House select committee. Controversy, but louder.
Trump sucked up the spotlight throughout the proceedings, consistently drawing the biggest crowds of the weekend as he watched the competition from a custom-built terrace along the 16th tee with a rotating cast of VIPs that on Sunday included Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson and far-right firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson and former US president Donald Trump watch Sunday’s final round. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
The 54-hole, no-cut competition – absent of meaningful stakes with no meaningful history or world ranking points on the line – felt more like a soft launch for Trump’s 2024 presidential run than an authentic sporting experience. Never more than during Sunday’s final round as spontaneous chants of “Four more years!” and “Let’s go Brandon!” – a coded vulgarity among Trump supporters – resounded across the Old Course.
The renegade circuit has enticed some of the sport’s biggest names with exorbitant $25m purses and nine-figure signing-on fees. It has also drawn fierce backlash from critics who accuse the Saudi government of using sports to launder the kingdom’s dismal human rights record, alleged ties to the September 11 attacks, severe repression of women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and the 2018 murder of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
But it doesn’t take a certified public accountant to understand why LIV Golf – despite the sparse crowds at Bedminster and its modest streaming audience in absence of a TV deal – has continued to poach one household name after another from golf’s established tours. Consider Johnson, two-time major champion who reportedly joined on a $150m signing fee, who has earned more than $5.2m in prize money in three LIV events so far. The splashy purses don’t stop at the top of the leaderboard, either. Australia’s Jediah Morgan, who finished 14-over-par for the weekend, a gaping 25 shots adrift of Stenson and in dead last, brought home $120,000 for his trouble. Nice work if you can get it.
LIV Golf is here to stay, it seems. Next stop: the Oaks course at the International outside Boston in September. But the strange scenes of Bedminster have only driven home just how far it has to go in order to win over its skeptics and bridge the divide of golf’s mounting civil war.
The 54-hole, no-cut competition – absent of meaningful stakes with no meaningful history or world ranking points on the line – felt more like a soft launch for Trump’s 2024 presidential run than an authentic sporting experience. Never more than during Sunday’s final round as spontaneous chants of “Four more years!” and “Let’s go Brandon!” – a coded vulgarity among Trump supporters – resounded across the Old Course.
The renegade circuit has enticed some of the sport’s biggest names with exorbitant $25m purses and nine-figure signing-on fees. It has also drawn fierce backlash from critics who accuse the Saudi government of using sports to launder the kingdom’s dismal human rights record, alleged ties to the September 11 attacks, severe repression of women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and the 2018 murder of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
But it doesn’t take a certified public accountant to understand why LIV Golf – despite the sparse crowds at Bedminster and its modest streaming audience in absence of a TV deal – has continued to poach one household name after another from golf’s established tours. Consider Johnson, two-time major champion who reportedly joined on a $150m signing fee, who has earned more than $5.2m in prize money in three LIV events so far. The splashy purses don’t stop at the top of the leaderboard, either. Australia’s Jediah Morgan, who finished 14-over-par for the weekend, a gaping 25 shots adrift of Stenson and in dead last, brought home $120,000 for his trouble. Nice work if you can get it.
LIV Golf is here to stay, it seems. Next stop: the Oaks course at the International outside Boston in September. But the strange scenes of Bedminster have only driven home just how far it has to go in order to win over its skeptics and bridge the divide of golf’s mounting civil war.
Jack Rathborn
Tue, August 2, 2022
Tiger Woods gestures to the crowd on the Old Course at St Andrews (AP)
Tiger Woods rejected LIV Golf’s approach when offered in the “neighbourhood” of $700 million to $800 million, Greg Norman has confirmed.
Norman, speaking on Tucker Carlson Tonight, revealed the talks begun before he was named CEO and commissioner of the rebel tour.
Woods has emerged as the sport’s most outspoken supporter of the PGA Tour during the civil war that has emerged this year with LIV Golf, siding with the R&A at The Open in St Andrews for not inviting Norman, a two-time Open champion, to the 150th celebration.
And Norman has now opened up on talks to land golf’s biggest name, previously labelling the offer as “mind-blowingly enormous; we’re talking about high nine digits.”
“That number was out there before I became CEO. So that number has been out there, yes,” Norman said in the Fox News interview at Trump National in Bedminster, New Jersey, during the third LIV Golf Invitational.
“And, look, Tiger is a needle-mover and of course you have to look at the best of the best,” Norman said. “So they had originally approached Tiger before I became CEO. So, yes, that number was somewhere in that neighborhood.”
LIV Golf has shaken up golf with enormous offers to some of the best players in the world, with Phil Mickelson reportedly receiving a $200 million signing bonus and Dustin Johnson taking $150 million.
But any hopes of landing Woods appear gone, with the 46-year-old criticising Norman last month.
“The R&A obviously have their opinions and their rulings and their decision,” Woods said. “Greg has done some things that I don’t think is in the best interest of our game, and we’re coming back to probably the most historic and traditional place in our sport. I believe it’s the right thing.
“I disagree with it. I think that what they’ve done is they’ve turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position.”
Norman further criticised the PGA Tour in the interview, adding: “It’s a monopoly.
“They just want to shut us down whatever way they can, so they’ll use whatever leverage point they can to shut us down, and they’re not. They’re not going to shut us down because the product speaks for itself.
“[Corporate sponsors dropping players who have defected to LIV Golf] blows my mind. Sponsors, by the way, who spend billions of dollars in Saudi Arabia. The PGA Tour has about 27 sponsors, I think, who do 40-plus billion dollars’ worth of business on an annual basis in Saudi Arabia.
“Why doesn’t the PGA Tour call the CEO of those organizations [and say], ‘I’m sorry we can’t do business with you because you’re doing business with Saudi Arabia.’ Why are they picking on the professional golfers?”
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