Tommy Martin: Paid stooges on a magic golfing journey to change the world

LIV Golf is just one front in Saudi Arabia’s long war to position itself as a thrusting global player while still maintaining its cruel, repressive power structure

Thu, 09 Jun, 2022 - 07:30

Tommy Martin

These are great days for the euphemism. Anybody can do it. You just take a not very nice thing and use words that have a completely different meaning to describe that thing and hey, presto! The not very nice thing vanishes. In its place are just harmless words.

So, if you are Vladimir Putin, you can refer to a brutal invasion of a neighbouring country as a ‘special military operation’. Boris Johnson can call a mass backbench rebellion against his leadership a ‘conclusive and decisive’ victory. And Graeme McDowell can describe taking money to launder the image of a brutal regime as being a “great role model for kids”.

Now it’s just part of public relations.

G-Mac was a PR man at his press conference this week, explaining his decision to sign up for the controversial LIV Golf tour. Oh, he might have thought he was just a golfer, standing in front of a pile of money, asking it to love him. He might actually have believed that twaddle about golf being a force for good and how the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way, blah, blah.

But he was merely a PR man, spinning a line. A paid stooge, literally. LIV Golf is just one front in Saudi Arabia’s long war to position itself as a thrusting global player while still maintaining its cruel, repressive power structure — and men like McDowell are the footsoldiers. Their job is to walk murderous dictators by the hand through the corridors of western liberal culture, nodding to everyone they pass on the way, saying “this is fine, everything is fine.”

It is best to see this whole enterprise in public relations terms; a brand repositioning exercise. You can imagine the top brass of the House of Saud in some gleaming glass boardroom, funkily spectacled executives pitching for their business.

“So what would you say your core brand values are?” the execs ask.

“Erm, murdering, executing, locking people up that we don’t like.”

“Right. Okay. Listen, it’s a wacky idea, but just hear us out. Have you ever considered…golf?”

McDowell referred to this process as a “journey”, as if the Saudi regime were a hopeful teenager auditioning for a TV talent show and he a worldly pop veteran urging them to believe in themselves. At no point in his stream of exculpatory drivel did McDowell say if he considered telling the Saudis that he might play in their golf events AFTER they stopped locking up gay people or bombing the shit out of Yemen. G-Mac delivers his services up front, you can send on the human rights later, or maybe not at all. Just make sure you send the money.

Until this week, those who had joined McDowell on this “journey” with LIV Golf were a mix of the greedy, the empty-headed and the past-it. G-Mac is far from the highest profile recruit. That would be Phil Mickelson. Phil cuts a slightly tragic figure, or as tragic as a man with $200m in a wheelbarrow can be. He is a recovering gambling addict being handed a blank cheque in the hope of wiping away his sins, his legacy as a beloved figure in his homeland in flames. He came across as halting, hollowed out in his own LIV press conference, his words a tortuous mix of therapy-speak and careful, press release verbiage, like some vacant replicant of his formerly freewheeling self.

Others, like Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood, are so obviously without scruple that they didn’t bother to pretend to care about beheadings and Jamal Khashoggi and Yemen and all that stuff. Poulter called it a “magnificent opportunity” — euphemism alert! — and Westwood said he was “comfortable” about the whole thing. Dustin Johnson? Dustin? Dustin? Anyone in there? Never mind.

But G-Mac is perfect. Who is G-Mac? In his own words (I’m not making this up, look up the YouTube video called ‘Get To Know G-Mac’): “he’s Irish, he plays a little golf, drinks the odd beer from time to time, he likes to hang out and just kinda be himself, really.” G-Mac is your buddy, he’s your pal. If G-Mac is on board, how bad can it be?

At the time of writing, it is reported that higher profile players like Bryson De Chambeau, Patrick Reed, and Rickie Fowler will soon join McDowell on his well-paid crusade to heal the world through golf. All will no doubt repeat the same phrases as G-Mac, those magic words about being independent contractors and how the ‘game of golf’ is changing and how exciting all this is. Anything but say I’m here for the money.

“We are not politicians, we’re just golfers” — that’s another one they like to use. This is the idea that you need to be an expert in geopolitical strategy to understand why you shouldn’t be a mouthpiece for a bloody, ruthless regime that saws up the bones of its enemies. It’s also a nudge to the fact that our politicians do business with Saudi Arabia all the time. But that’s because we need their oil. What do rich golfers need from the Saudis? Swing tips from their executioners?

Words, expensive words. After his press conference on Tuesday, McDowell attended the first LIV Golf draft, some sort of lame team format being tacked on to this malarkey and for which he is a captain. A clip LIV Golf released on Twitter showed McDowell on stage picking from a menu, lik e some high-class steakhouse.

McDowell picked Bernd Wiesberger for his team, Niblicks GC. The Irish golf broadcaster Shane O’Donoghue presided over the event, presumably having assuaged his conscience over the fate of Khashoggi, a fellow journalist. O’Donoghue, a familiar, oily presence on the golf circuit through his work with CNN, shouted “the Austrian, Bernd Wiesbergerrrrrr!” with unvarnished glee and everyone clapped and whooped.

See, the words are making the bad thing go away. Isn’t it magical?