The moral outrage over Greg Norman’s extraordinary defence of Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 has spread far beyond golf but rarely pierced the complicity within its locker rooms. Norman’s obscenely lucrative invitational series, solely funded by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, has drawn coy interest rather than condemnation from players over the past few months and it was only after Phil Mickelson made a similar gaffe in February that the prospect of a rival league was reduced to a series of eight disruptive events.
The first of those will take place at the Centurion Club in St Albans next month, with Mickelson, Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter among those who have sought releases to compete in the $25m (£20m) tournament. That has become a legal battleground in itself, with Norman pledging to “defend, reimburse and represent” players if their participation leads to fines and bans from the PGA and DP World Tours. That threat of uncertainty may well provoke a new wave of hesitancy but moral impediments have been far less apparent.
