At Adelaide Oval on Sunday attending an AFL match featuring the sport’s most popular team, Collingwood, Americans Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed were beaming. It is little surprise the LIV Golf trio, who share seven major titles between them, were smiling as they were photographed alongside the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas.
The welcome the tour’s 48 golfers have received ahead of the tournament at the Grange Golf Club this week is stark in contrast to the criticism they were subjected to around the globe last year. If Australians had any doubts about the malign influence of sportswashing and its ability to polish the reputation of nations, the inaugural LIV down under event is a counterpoint.
When those same golfers arrived at the Donald Trump-owned Bedminster in New Jersey last July, bereaved families and friends of those killed in the 9-11 attacks were protesting. The disturbing human rights violations Saudi Arabia is accused of, from torturing women’s rights advocates to assassinating journalists, among other atrocities, remain.
But in Adelaide, there has barely been a ripple of dissent. Ground passes to this weekend’s event sold out so quickly an additional allotment was sourced. The golfers are confident they will be cheered from the first tee. And a cross-section of local headlines associated with LIV Golf chief executive Greg Norman this week are almost entirely positive, ranging from his near ace last weekend to his belief more world class players will join the tour amid plans for an extension in Australia in 2024.
The players who signed up for the multimillion-dollar tour’s inaugural season are, naturally, focusing on the golf; when the topic of sportswashing was brought up at a media conference on Wednesday, Bryson DeChambeau rejected the idea.
“We talked about that last year, and we already kind of kicked that to the kerb,” he said. “It’s something that I truthfully believe is inaccurate. People have their opinions and perspectives on it, but we certainly don’t feel that way.”
In a week when it was revealed Saudi Arabian officials have raised with Indian Premier League owners plans to host the world’s richest Twenty20 tournament, and following on from the success of the F1 Grand Prix in Jeddah last month, the smooth sailing in South Australia is another win for the gulf state and an example of sportswashing at its most malevolent.
Malinauskas, who has enjoyed a busy Easter after hosting the AFL’s Gather Round which brought tens of thousands to SA, is aware of the criticism. But when defending his state’s alignment with a prized jewel of the Saudi Arabia Private Investment Fund last November, he went on the attack, branding critics hypocrites.
“I’m conscious of the fact there are those in the more establishment camp of golf who are proferring arguments that I think have a high degree of hypocrisy and inconsistency with them,” he said. “The simple fact is this. Saudi Arabia is an open trading partner to Australia to a large degree, [and] more than that, we’ve actually got a defence relationship with Saudi Arabia.
“As far as the South Australian taxpayer is concerned, we’re only holding a golf tournament, which is going to attract people from all over the world to our state.” That is not in dispute, for it seems likely this will be the most successful tournament in the tour’s fledgling history in terms of attendance and publicity.
In another contradiction for a tour financed by a country where alcohol is forbidden, the event is being billed as one almighty party. A case in point is a promotional interview featuring Cam Smith’s all-Australian team, the Rippers GC, which would be enough to make a golfing purist reach for a stiff drink.
The are plenty of conflicting themes associated with golf’s disrupting force.
On one hand LIV Golf is providing “starved” Australian golf fans with the chance to watch the type of world-class field they have been “deprived” of by the dominant American PGA Tour. There is a legitimacy to that theme given the well-recognised damage inflicted on the Australian tour, and others as well, over decades as the American circuit grew exponentially.
But whether fans will be sober enough to appreciate Smith’s perfect pitches, the booming driving of Dechambeau or the timeless swagger of Phil Mickelson is another matter. Smith promises fans are “going to have a really good time”. According to his teammate Leishman, LIV brings a proper “party feel”.
“[It’s] going to be so pumped … with the music going, then drinking – knowing how the Australians like to drink and have fun – it’s going to be wild time,” said Matt Jones, another teammate of Smith’s.
A cynic might suggest all this booze makes it easier to forget the sportswashing allegations. But the lead-in to LIV Adelaide suggests this is a battle the disruptors have already won.
