Golf Legend Tom Watson Calls Out Saudi Deal in Letter to PGA Tour Commish: Explain This In a Way We Can ‘Look 9/11 Families in the Eye’
(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
The backlash continues against the agreement struck by the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — which backed PGA Tour-rival LIV Golf. And golf legend Tom Watson has issued an open letter asking for an explanation of what really drove the decision.
The letter was addressed to commissioner Jay Monahan, the board of the PGA Tour, and “my fellow players” and was obtained by the Associated Press. In the letter, Watson posited that the controversial merger may not have been “the only viable rescue from the Tour’s financial problems” and asked if there had ever been an alternative solution.
The Commissioner and the PGA Tour Board, on which five Tour players sit, are going to have to do a lot of firsthand explaining to comfortably coax acceptance with our membership on this partnership with the [Saudi-backed Public Investment Fund]. The Tour’s stakeholders: the players themselves, the broad span of global media, as well as the tournament sponsors and independent Tour partners, require an explanation of the benefits of forming this partnership.
Watson’s request for an explanation came with several questions that concerned how the deal would impact the Tour’s membership, but a big question was why the deal happened “in such secrecy and why wasn’t even one of the players who sits on the Tour’s Policy Board included?”
But the most scorching statement was Watson’s accusation of hypocrisy when it came to partnering with the Saudis while doing so much to support 9/11 families:
I still await Saudi acknowledgement of their role in the attacks of 9/11, which resulted in the loss of the innocent lives of 3000 of my fellow American citizens. … That day, forever among the darkest in our nation’s history, is sadly not alone among the human rights violations we have seen employed by Saudi Arabia. I ask the Tour, how is a non-negotiable point for us one day one we negotiate around the next?
…
My loyalty to golf and this country live in the same place and have held equal and significant weight with me over my lifetime. Please educate me and others in a way that allows loyalty to both, and in a way that makes it easy to look 9/11 families in the eye and ourselves in the mirror.
Several players — notably four-time major winner Rory McIlroy — have spoken out against the merger and cited this as a massive betrayal by Monahan. The group 9/11 Families United said “the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones.”
The merger rocked the golf world, and the criticism has prompted investigation into the deal. Over the weekend, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) announced a congressional probe into the PGA Tour’s deal with the PIF.
