Trump Golf Course in New York City Will Host Saudi-Backed Event The New York Times
Tag: Saudibacked
Events like recent Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament at Trump’s club could soon be banned in N.J.
Just a few weeks after former President Donald Trump hosted the controversial LIV Golf tour at his Bedminster club, a pair of state lawmakers have introduced a proposal that would ban such an event from ever happening again in New Jersey.
The bill from state Sens. Andrew Zwicker and Richard Codey, both Democrats, would prohibit sports organizations that operate primarily with money from sovereign wealth funds from hosting sporting events in the Garden State.
That would include LIV, the professional golf tour that aims to rival the PGA but has faced blowback because it’s backed by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
In announcing their bill Tuesday, Zwicker and Codey pointed out that U.S. intelligence reports have said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the prince denies. They also noted the country has been accused of human rights abuses.
“New Jersey has long been fertile ground for producing top-quality athletes, and for hosting major sporting events known throughout the world,” Zwicker, D-Middlesex, said.
“Yet we do not need further recognition or notoriety from hosting competitions that are bankrolled by repressive governments or unsavory actors like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. This legislation will prohibit the Saudi PIF or any other sovereign wealth fund from using New Jersey or its sporting organizations in any shameful ‘sports-washing’ endeavors.”
In addition, families of Sept. 11 victims protested the LIV at Trump’s club last month, calling it “death golf,” after FBI documents last year said Saudi hijackers received support from Saudi nationals leading into the 2001 terrorist attack. The Saudi government has denied any involvement in the attacks.
“No one would have believed that after that terrible day that we would be allowing foreign governments to hold events in New Jersey in an attempt to clean up their image after centuries of human rights abuses and connections to terrorists,” Codey, D-Essex, said.
The founder of the group 9/11 Justice told Politico that a Trump representative called him to say Sept. 11 “is really near and dear to Trump” and he will “remember everyone” who sent a letter relaying their anger about the event.
At the event, Trump said “nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9/11 unfortunately, and they should have.” He also called the terrorists who carried out the attack “maniacs that did that horrible thing to our city, to our country, to the world.”
The Republican and his senior adviser and son-in-law, New Jersey native Jared Kushner, had close relationships with the Saudi crown prince when Trump was president. After Trump left office, the Saudi investment fund gave $2 billion to Kushner’s private equity firm.
Meanwhile, Trump has said the LIV Tour has created “gold rush” for players. The tour has offered top golfers tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to play. The deal Phil Mickelson signed is rumored to be worth $200 million over less than give years.
Mickelson has defended playing in the tour, saying “I don’t condone human rights violations at all” but he has also “seen the good that the game of golf has done throughout history and I believe LIV Golf is going to do a lot of good for the game as well.”
Under New Jersey’s proposed bill, the state attorney general would have the authority to ensure municipalities, countries, organizations, governments, property owners, and licenses holders comply with the ban.
The measure would need to be passed by both the state Senate and Assembly — both of which are controlled by Democrats — and signed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy to become law.
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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @johnsb01.
9/11 Families Call on Trump to Cancel Saudi-Backed Golf Event
Relatives of people killed on Sept. 11 are urging former President Donald J. Trump to cancel a Saudi-backed golf tournament set to be held this month at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey.
In a letter dated Sunday, members of the group 9/11 Justice asked to meet with Mr. Trump and urged him not to host the event, set for July 29 to 31, noting that Mr. Trump has blamed Saudi Arabia for the attack.
“We simply cannot understand how you could agree to accept money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s golf league to host their tournament at your golf course, and to do so in the shadows of ground zero in New Jersey, which lost over 700 residents during the attacks,” they wrote in the letter.
“It is incomprehensible to us that a former president of the United States would cast our loved ones aside for personal financial gain,” they wrote to Mr. Trump, who is expected to run for president again in 2024. “We hope you will reconsider your business relationship with the Saudi golf league and will agree to meet with us.”
In the letter, the group noted that Mr. Trump told Fox News in February 2016: “Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis. It was Saudi. Take a look at Saudi Arabia.” He went on to say: “The people came, most of the people came from Saudi Arabia. They didn’t come from Iraq.”
An email sent to 9/11 Justice was not immediately returned on Sunday. Messages left at Mr. Trump’s club in Bedminster, and with a spokesman for Mr. Trump, were also not immediately answered.
The Saudi-sponsored golf league is part of a campaign by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to refresh the kingdom’s image in the eyes of the world.
The man who defeated Mr. Trump in 2020, President Biden, has recently faced criticism for his own connection to Saudi Arabia. Last week during a Middle East trip, Mr. Biden fist-bumped Prince Mohammed, who was judged responsible by the C.I.A. for the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Mr. Biden said he confronted Prince Mohammed about the killing during a closed-door meeting with him; Saudi officials contradicted his account.
LIV Golf tour schedule 2022: Dates, locations for all eight events in the controversial Saudi-backed PGA Tour rival
With a tumultuous build-up and a succession of frequently jarring pre-tournament media engagements all but done, the LIV Golf Invitational Series will tee off at the Centurion Club in Hertfordshire.
Former world number one Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson are among the leading lights taking part in the competition, which is not being recognised by the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR).
Major winners Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell and Louis Oosthuizen are also involved, along with European Ryder Cup stars Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood.
Johnson is the only player currently ranked inside the world top 20 taking part – Oosthuizen slipped to 21st this week – but intrigue remains significant around the Saudi-backed project that organisers are billing as “golf, but louder”.
So, what accounts for this volume alteration other than the well-documented vast wads of cash? Here, we run through the inaugural LIV Golf schedule and format, along with the prize money on offer.
What is the schedule for the LIV Golf Invitational Series?
This week’s opener is the first of eight events, spanning four countries and running until the team championship finale at Trump National Doral, Miami in October this year.
| Course | Location | Date | |
| 1 | Centurion Club | Hertfordshire, England | June 9-11 |
| 2 | Pumpkin Ridge | Portland, Oregon | June 30 – July 2 |
| 3 | Trump National Golf Club Bedminster | Bedminster, New Jersey | July 29-31 |
| 4 | The International | Boston, Massachusetts | September 2-4 |
| 5 | Rich Harvest Farms | Chicago, Illinois | September 16-18 |
| 6 | Stonehill | Bangkok, Thailand | October 7-9 |
| 7 | Royal Greens Golf & Country Club | Jeddah, Saudi Arabia | October 14-16 |
| 8 | Trump National Golf Club Doral | Miami, Florida | October 27-30 |
LIV Golf format explained
The LIV Golf Invitational Series features two competitions that will take place concurrently: an individual event and a team event.
The first seven events will take place over the course of LIV Golf’s four-month regular season. The eighth event will be the team championship in late October in Miami, where teams compete against one another in a matchplay format for the LIV Golf team trophy.
Individual event
The first seven LIV events will have an individual competition, where each golfer will compete in a strokeplay format over the course of 54 holes, as opposed to the standard 72-hole tour events.
There are no cuts and the golfer with the lowest score after 54 holes will be declared the winner. The events will feature shotgun starts – each player starting at the same time but at a different hole, as opposed to consecutive playing groups starting one after the other at the first.
On each day of the opening competition at Centurion Club, the golfers will make their shotgun starts at 14:00 BST. The trophy presentation is scheduled for 18:30 BST on Sunday, highlighting the compressed playing time that the shotgun format allows.
Team event
Each event will feature 12 teams made up of four golfers each, with LIV Golf appointing a captain to lead each team. Those captains will then select the other three players for their teams in a snake draft format each week, as was the case for the opener in London.
Captains will also select the lineup for each week. Each team will have its own logo, name and colours.
MORE: Why is Dustin Johnson playing in Saudi-backed LIV Golf Series?
Team scoring
During the first two rounds, each team’s best two scores will be used to decide where they rank. That number rises to three in the third and final round.
The team championship in Miami will be a four-day, four-round match-play knockout bracket.
LIV Golf prize money
Each regular-season event features a $25 million purse (£20 million), with $20 million to be split over the 48 golfers taking part. The winner stands to make $4 million, with the player bringing up the rear in the no-cut format having the consolation of pocketing $120,000.
The remaining $5 million will go to the top three teams, with $3 million, $1.5 million and $500,000 covering the respective podium positions.
At the end of the individual events, players who have participated in at least four will divide a $30 million bonus pool. The individual champion will net $18 million, the second-place golfer $8 million, and the third-place $4 million.
The winning team after the season finale will receive $16 million, with the group in last place still able to split $1 million in tournament earnings.
Saudi-backed golf tour lures PGA pros, but backlash lands them in the rough | CBC News
The world of professional golf is embroiled in a very messy, very public divorce with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
Thursday in London, 17 of the world’s top golfers, including Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson, teed off in the first event on the new Saudi-sponsored LIV Golf tour.
Even though 10 of the 17 players had already formally resigned from the PGA tour, commissioner Jay Monahan officially banned all of them from playing in future PGA events moments after the London event began.
LIV players are still eligible to compete in golf’s four major tournaments, which the PGA does not control.
“These players have made their choice for their own financial-based reasons,” Monahan said in a statement. “But they can’t demand the same PGA Tour membership benefits, considerations, opportunities and platform as you. The expectation disrespects you, our fans and our partners.”
LIV Golf quickly responded: “It’s troubling that the tour, an organization dedicated to creating opportunities for golfers to play the game, is the entity blocking golfers from playing.”
Like many divorces, this is about money.
The eight-event LIV tour is being funded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is controlled by members of the Saudi royal family and has about $600 billion in assets. It is offering prize money of $25 million per tournament, dwarfing even the biggest purses on the PGA tour.
It’s also paid massive appearance fees to entice top players to join this new tour. Johnson and Mickelson were reportedly paid $150 million and $200 million before ever hitting a shot.
Fracturing the game
The RBC Canadian Open, one of the oldest stops on the PGA tour with a total purse of $8.7 million, is being held this week in Toronto and is the first PGA event to go head to head with the LIV tour.
(LIV is the Roman numeral 54, referring to the 54 holes that make up tour events as opposed to the 72 on the PGA Tour)
Even before the tournament began, RBC lost its main spokesperson and face of the Canadian Open when Dustin Johnson abruptly bolted to the LIV Tour.
Tournament officials point to a quality field featuring five of the top 10 players in the world and robust ticket sales as evidence that despite LIV’s arrival on the scene, the PGA is stronger than ever.
“You want to watch the best players in the world, especially some of the best young players in the world. They’re here in Canada. They’re here in Toronto,” RBC Canadian Open tournament director Bryan Crawford told CBC.
At the same time, players expressed worry about how this new deep-pocketed tour could change golf’s future.
“Any decision that you make in your life that’s purely for money usually doesn’t end up going the right way,” said four-time major winner Rory McIlroy. “I think it’s a shame that it’s going to fracture the game.”
Canadian golfer Graham DeLaet, who played for more than decade on the PGA tour before recently retiring, says it will be hard for many players to turn their backs on money never seen before in golf.
“There’s a lot of ethical and moral questions regarding where the money is coming from but guys make their own decisions and, when that cheque is dangled in front of your eyes, I mean it makes things a little more difficult,” DeLaet told CBC.
As DeLaet points out, this story is about more than just money and golf. It’s also about politics.
There has been a renewed focus on Saudi regime backing the upstart LIV tour and its atrocious human rights record including, most recently, the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
WATCH | LIV Golf’s big money has lured top golfers away from PGA tour:
The LIV Golf league funded by the Saudi government is poaching some of the world’s top golfers, including Dustin Johnson, to leave the PGA Tour.
Golf vs. politics
In the days leading up to the London event, players like Mickelson did their best to keep the worlds of golf and politics separate.
“I’m certainly aware of what happened with Jamal Khashoggi and I think it’s terrible,” Mickelson said. “I’ve also seen the good that the game of golf has done throughout history, and I believe that LIV Golf is going to do a lot of good.”
Fellow LIV player Graeme McDowell rejected the notion that by participating in the Saudi backed tour, he was normalizing or excusing the regime’s atrocities.
“I think as golfers, if we tried to cure geopolitical situations in every country in the world that we play golf in, we wouldn’t play a lot of golf,” he said.
Still, some contend that for golfers, many who have made a fortune playing the game, this should be about more than the money being dangled by the LIV Tour.
Cheri Bradish, a sport marketing professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, argues that the golfers who so far have rejected LIV’s overtures may be the ultimate winners in this just-beginning battle.
“If you want to think about keeping your partners, doing your speaking gigs and still having relationships commercially and people will argue with $150 million, you don’t need those,” Bradish said.
“But you want to believe in this society. that sports figures will understand that they can and could and should do very good things with the platform that they have.”
PGA Tour suspends players in Saudi-backed event as golf’s discord deepens
Having poached players with tens of millions of guaranteed dollars and promised fans more action than traditional tournaments, LIV Golf staged the opening round of its inaugural tournament at the Centurion Club in England amid criticism it was participating in an attempt to cleanse the global reputation of the Saudi Arabian government.
Moments after the first balls flew through the air, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan sent a memo to members from the tour’s Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. headquarters, announcing the tour had suspended the 17 of its players participating in LIV Golf and, with several other stars on the verge of leaving, vowing it would do the same to others.
The Tour’s immediate and strong response underscored the existential threat LIV Golf presents to the business model around which professional golf revolved from the days of Arnold Palmer through Jack Nicklaus’s prime to Tiger Woods’s reign.
Shepherded into existence by former pro golfer Greg Norman and backed by a Saudi investment fund, LIV Golf attracted a number of PGA Tour stalwarts by offering massive signing bonuses and purses; shorter, no-cut events; a lighter schedule; and guaranteed prize money and appearance fees that are foreign to almost every form of professional golf. The rebel tour has no designs on turning a short-term profit, aiming instead to gain an instant foothold in the sport. It used nine-figure contracts to lure Phil Mickelson — a six-time major winner and one of golf’s most familiar faces, who infamously referred to the Saudis as “scary mother——-” in an interview with his biographer — and Dustin Johnson, two of the game’s greatest players.
The PGA Tour has argued to its players that moving to LIV Golf will cost them stability and legacy. LIV Golf can offer guaranteed money on par with athletes in other sports, even if many believe the money is tainted by atrocities of a repressive Saudi government.
The insurgent players will compete initially in an eight-event series around the globe. Two tournaments, including the season finale, will be played at courses owned by former president Donald Trump, whose courses the PGA Tour has distanced itself from. With a handful of players, including major winners Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau, expected to jump to LIV Golf by its next tournament June 30 in Portland, Ore., the series is threatening to reconfigure the order of a mannerly sport.
“It’s a shame that it’s going to fracture the game,” star Rory McIlroy, perhaps the most vociferous defender of the PGA Tour, told reporters Wednesday at a news conference before the Canadian Open. “The professional game is the window shop into golf. If the general public are confused about who is playing where and what tournament’s on this week and who is, you know, ‘Oh, he plays there, okay, and he doesn’t get into these events.’ It just becomes so confusing. I think everything needs to try to become more cohesive, and I think it was on a pretty good trajectory until this happened.”
Players who join LIV will likely face the same thorny questions their peers did this week, when golfers deflected reporters’ inquiries about the Saudi government’s alleged killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and other human rights concerns.
Norther Ireland’s Graeme McDowell said in a news conference that “the Khashoggi situation” was “reprehensible,” but that he believed LIV Golf could be a positive force.
“I just try to be a great role model to kids,” McDowell said. “We are not politicians. I know [reporters] hate that expression, but we are really not, unfortunately. We are professional golfers.”
That stance, experts say, is exactly what the Saudis want as they seek to change the subject from alleged human rights violations.
“The Saudis want normality. They want to be seen as supporters of a game that a lot of people like to watch and play. They’ll therefore expect the players to behave much as they would do in any other tournament,” said University of Sussex politics professor Dan Hough, who specializes in integrity and corruption in sports. “It’ll be much more a case of talking positively about the tournament they are involved in from a golfing perspective.”
In his memo to PGA Tour players, Monahan pointedly referred to LIV Golf as the “Saudi Golf League” and called LIV Golf participants “players who have decided to turn their backs on the PGA Tour.”
“These players have made their choice for their own financial-based reasons,” Monahan wrote. “But they can’t demand the same PGA TOUR membership benefits, considerations, opportunities and platform as you. That expectation disrespects you, our fans and our partners.”
Monahan told players he is certain fans and sponsors “are tired of all this talk of money, money and more money.” But the tour has attempted to assuage players with its own financial incentives. It has raised purses, enhanced end-of-season bonus money and introduced the Player Impact Program, which funnels money to stars based on a combination of performance and off-course promotion.
The tour, though, cannot compete financially with the deep pockets of LIV Golf or its guaranteed money for appearances, which violates the PGA Tour’s entrenched pay-for-performance ethos. Its best appeal may be the promise of playing in non-tour events such as the four majors, the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup, which is scheduled for September. The organizations that run those events have not offered definitive decisions on how to deal with the breakaway players.
The United States Golf Association, which runs the U.S. Open, said this week it will allow players who have already qualified to play next week in Brookline, Mass. PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh, whose organization runs the PGA Championship, said last month that he didn’t think LIV Golf was “good for the game” and that his group supported golf’s current “ecosystem.”
The PGA Tour also recognizes it could receive a legal challenge from the suspended players, backed by LIV. Mickelson, who took a months-long, self-imposed exile after his controversial comments surfaced, has said he intends to keep the lifetime exemption his performance earned him.
“You probably have more questions,” Monahan wrote in his Thursday memo to players. “What’s next? Can these players come back? Can they eventually play PGA Tour Champions [the tour’s senior circuit]? Trust that we’ve prepared to deal with those questions …”
Meanwhile, the new league — whose LIV name refers to the Roman numeral of its 54-hole events and rhymes with “give” — struck a cheery tone during its first round. Without a traditional television deal, it was streamed on YouTube, Facebook and the LIV website. The event began with a shotgun start, placing threesomes at every tee box on the course as men in Beefeater outfits blew an opening horn.
“I feel so happy for the players. I feel so happy that we’ve brought free agency to golf,” Norman said as the first broadcast began.
Said Johnson: “I’m just excited to get it started. It’s a new chapter for golf. The fans are going to love it, all the players who are here are going to love it.”
But in a statement released by LIV Golf with the first round underway, the crisis roiling this sport was laid bare.
“Today’s announcement by the PGA Tour is vindictive and it deepens the divide between the Tour and its members,” the statement said, in part. “ … This certainly is not the last word on this topic.”
PGA Tour denies golfers’ waiver requests to play Saudi-backed LIV Golf league event in London
In a surprising decision by the PGA Tour this week, golfers who sought permission to play in the first LIV Golf Invitational Series tournament have been denied their waiver requests. It is unknown at this time whether any PGA Tour players will risk punishment by going ahead with participation in the event at the Centurion Club in London from June 9-11.
“We have notified those who have applied that their request has been declined in accordance with the PGA TOUR Tournament Regulations. As such, TOUR members are not authorized to participate in the Saudi Golf League’s London event under our Regulations,” said PGA Tour senior vice president Tyler Dennis in a memo to players. “As a membership organization, we believe this decision is in the best interest of the PGA TOUR and its players.”
The belief was that the PGA Tour, which must grant permission to its members to play in events outside the PGA Tour itself, would approve the waivers for the first of eight LIV Golf events this year before denying them at a later date when the league moved to North American turf. Instead, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has laid down the law early, denying his membership the ability to participate in the big-money events from the jump.
This is slightly unusual. Many golfers, including Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson were granted waivers earlier this year to play in the Saudi International, which is an event on the Asian Tour. However, the PGA Tour sees this LIV Golf Invitational series differently, ostensibly because it is not a one-off event but the beginning of a rival league. The PGA Tour only allows players three waiver requests a year.
If players choose to defy those denied waivers and play the event anyway, Monahan has consistently maintained in private that players could be suspended and permanently banned from the PGA Tour.
“Our PGA Tour rules and regulations were written by the players, for the players,” said Monahan at the Players Championship earlier this year, implying that suspensions and bans would hold up in a court of law. “They’ve been in existence for over 50 years. I’m confident in our rules and regulations, my ability to administer them, and that’s my position on the matter. … We’re confident in our position, and we’re going to keep moving forward as a PGA Tour and focus on the things that we control.”
PGA Tour players who either requested waiver releases or were linked with the league include Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, Jason Kokrak, Kevin Na and Robert Garrigus. Then there’s Mickelson, of course, who is by far the biggest name involved, seemingly the linchpin for the entire thing and will undoubtedly end up being the poster boy in a court of law for how this all shakes out.
LIV Golf is a Saudi Arabia-financed league that is laboring to create an alternative golf tour while luring some of the top players in the world to its events. It was reported that Phil Mickelson helped write the operating agreement for the league before he disappeared from public view following some controversial comments about the folks running the league he allegedly helped start. The 48-golfer, 12-team LIV Golf events — five of which are slated to be played in the United States later this year — will have purses of $20 million, including a $5 million payout to the top team at each event.
Greg Norman, who is currently serving as the CEO of LIV Golf, has been adamant that legally-speaking golfers — who are considered independent contractors — could not be banned from the PGA Tour. The Tour obviously sees that differently. While this waiver denial is certainly surprising for the first event — the PGA Tour grants waivers all the time to events not held on North American soil — this was always going to come to a head at some point later on when the leagues clashed with conflicting events on the same dates in the United States.
This entire saga has been one that would likely head to court since the day it began. Now, it seems that is likely to happen sooner than originally thought.
Lee Westwood breaks silence on Saudi-backed LIV Golf events in passionate plea
Speaking at The Belfry, where he is competing in this week’s Betfred British Masters, the 49-year-old talked passionately about the threat of players being banned if they align themselves with new money-spinning series being fronted by Greg Norman.
Westwood had previously been reticent to chat about being linked with the $25 million events, the first of which is being held at the Centurion Club, near St Albans, but, while trying to be respectful about his workplace for the next four days, the former world No 1 clearly decided it was time to speak up.
“I’ve asked for a release from the PGA Tour and European Tour for the Centurion like many others have,” said Westwood as he joined Richard Bland, the defending Betfred British Masters champion, in confirming that.
“I’ve asked for releases for tournaments for as long as I’ve been on tour. It’s not the first release I’ve asked for. I’ve asked for many. Not heard anything back yet. Ball is in the European Tour’s court and the PGA Tour’s court for that matter.”
PGA Tour rules stipulate that the tour must decide whether to grant releases at least 30 days before the Centurion event, which would be 10 May. That is also the deadline for DP World Tour players to request releases.
“I don’t think it’s a case of fairness,” said Westwood, a British Masters winner by five shots at The Belfry in 2007, in reply to being asked if someone like him who’d been loyal to the DP World Tour over the years deserved to be facing a potential ban. “I think it’s a case of whichever authority is feeling whatever they do is right.
“I’ve supported the European Tour for 29 years. I’ve gone over and won on the PGA Tour in ’98, not taken my card. I’ve never been sort of driven by playing on the PGA Tour like a lot of the guys have. It’s been their kind of goal to get on to the PGA Tour. It never has for me.
“My goal has always been to be a European Tour member and support this tour and kind of go in and out of the PGA Tour. I’ve hosted events on this tour and obviously played wherever I can through Covid and stuff like that. I consider myself a European Tour member and I’ve always tried to support the European Tour as much as I can.”
Two other European Ryder Cup stalwarts, Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter, have also been linked with the LIV Golf International Series, which comprises eight events this year, as have two past Open champions, Louis Oosthuizen and Phil Mickelson.
It is rumoured that the PGA Tour are set to grant releases for the Centurion event but will then take a different approach over tournaments on American soil thereafter that clash directly with ones on the US circuit.
“It’s being portrayed as us and them, whereas the people from LIV Golf, all the reports I’ve read, have said that they want to stand side-by-side and they are not going up against any of the really massive tournaments,” observed Westwood. “They kind of want everybody to be able to play, have options. They are not forcing anybody’s hand, so I believe.
“People always have a problem with change, don’t they? They are skeptical about it and people like, in whatever walk it is, they like continuity and they like just the same to carry on. Whereas change in competition are good in any walk of life, I think. It shakes things up and keeps everybody on their toes and keeps everybody trying to improve and improve their product.”
