Later this week, the LIV Golf tour will play its third event of the season at former President Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey. Days before the shotgun start, it’s already the most contentious event on a tour that’s known nothing but controversy in its nine months of formal existence.
LIV has enticed many of the biggest names in golf, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, away from the PGA Tour with the allure of massive signing bonuses and guaranteed payouts at 54-hole, no-cut events. Backed by the vast wealth of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV Golf has drawn accusations of “sportswashing” – that is, using spectacles such as sports to distract from, or normalize, human rights violations committed by the Saudi regime.
After two YouTube-broadcast events, the LIV tour now arrives at a club owned by Trump, who remains in the news more than 18 months after he lost the 2020 presidential election. Trump has sparred with the PGA Tour and other golf governing bodies ever since he first announced his run for president in 2015, and LIV represents an opportunity for him to return his golf business to the public eye at large.
However, the location of his Bedminster club — just 50 miles from New York City — as well as LIV’s foundational ties to the Saudi government have drawn criticism from activist groups who decry the tournament as an insensitive insult to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Protests are taking place all week in New Jersey prior to the tournament’s shotgun start Friday.
It’s a golf tournament where the actual golf ranks well down on the list of most newsworthy items.
Trump’s long history with golf
Trump’s connection to LIV is a direct result of the broken connections with the world of elite professional golf….
Source : yahoo
