Bryson DeChambeau has said that talk of LIV Golf being a sportswashing exercise for the Saudi Arabian regime is "completely inaccurate."
The Saudi-backed circuit has received plenty of criticisms over the past year including from 9/11 Families and human rights groups like Amnesty International.
The 48-man, 12-team circuit makes its Australian debut this week, where it is being heralded for bringing back top level golf, and golfers, to a country that has been starved of it. However, not everyone is welcoming the tour, with Human Rights Watch researcher Joey Shea, a specialist in Saudi politics, calling LIV a blatant example of "sportswashing" in an interview with ABC News.
"Saudi Arabia has experienced one of its worst periods for human rights in its modern history," she told ABC this week.
"Last year in March, we saw the largest single day execution in recent history. 81 people were executed in Saudi Arabia in a single day. We really see LIV Golf as a major sportswashing attempt by Saudi Arabia to cover up its egregious abuses."
Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 US Open winner and former World No.5, was asked about LIV and sportswashing ahead of the event in Adelaide, and he called those claims "completely inaccurate".
"Well, we talked about that last year, and we already kind of kicked that to the curb," DeChambeau said.
"It's something that I truthfully believe is completely inaccurate. People have their opinions and their perspectives on it, but we certainly don't feel that way. We're playing golf here."
He also said that The Masters was "awesome", where LIV players got the chance to socialise with and compete against the best from the PGA Tour for the first time since last July's 150th Open.
"At the Masters it was awesome. Everybody that I had previously had relationships with, nothing changed from my perspective," he said on whether the perceived frosty relationships between LIV and PGA Tour players were thawing.
"Like I play out of Dallas National, and I see Spieth every once in a while, and we don't have any issues. There's no problems. Will Zalatoris, same thing, there's no issues.
"I think a lot of it's the media sometimes, not necessarily you guys. Australia has been fantastic. But sometimes that's just what it is. I understand it. I think we all do. But at a certain point in time we're all golfers. We still play great golf, and as you can see at the Masters you had three of the four up at the top were LIV players."
What has Greg Norman previously said about sportswashing?
LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman last year called out the PGA Tour for being hypocritical over sportswashing claims.
"The hypocrisy coming out of this is so deafening it's ridiculous," Norman said in September on Piers Morgan Uncensored. "The PGA Tour has title sponsors that have a great working relationship, for a commercial opportunity, with the Saudi Government and with the PIF (Public Investment Fund)."
They echoed words he said last June when it was suggested that players were accepting "blood money".
“Look, I’m disappointed people go down that path, quite honestly. If they want to look at it in prism, then why does the PGA Tour have 23 sponsors doing 40 plus billion dollars worth of business with Saudi Arabia? Why is it OK for the sponsors? Will Jay Monahan [PGA Tour Commissioner] go to each and every one of those CEOs of the 23 companies that are investing into Saudi Arabia and suspend them and ban them? The hypocrisy in all this, it’s so loud. It’s deafening," he said on One Nation with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News.
