The golf bags of some of the elite players being chastised for playing in Saudi Arabia this week. Photo / Getty Images
The golf bags of some of the elite players being chastised for playing in Saudi Arabia this week. Photo / Getty Images
For a sport in which quarrels tend to be about flagsticks or broom-handle putters, golf is making an impressive job of dividing into camps over Saudi Arabia. Who could have guessed Justin Rose and Dustin Johnson would find themselves on the front line of assassination and war?
Welcome, everyone, to the "Saudi International powered by SBIA" at the Royal Greens Golf and Country Club in the King Abdullah Economic City. Already you will know you are in a parody of golfing hell; one with US$3.3 million in appearance fees for some of the the world's elite players and a US$3.5m prize purse.
So far, so predictable for Saudi's inaugural European Tour event this week — until the shout goes up that Florida's finest should boycott the tournament over the murder of US citizen and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose body is believed to have been cut into parts and dissolved in acid at the Saudi ministry in Istanbul.
Paul Casey has declined the invitation to be "powered by SBIA" and Tiger Woods is also a non-attendee, for reasons he has not explained. Kiwi Ryan Fox is playing.
Meanwhile, Brandel Chamblee, the golf analyst, upped the clubhouse ante with a wider denunciation. "To turn a blind eye to the butchering of a media member in some way euphemises the egregious atrocity that not only took place with the Khashoggi murder, but what goes on there all the time," Chamblee said.
"It is a PR stunt. Non-participation — and I applaud Paul Casey — in some marginal way makes a statement about human rights. By participating, [the players] are ventriloquists for this abhorrent, reprehensible regime."
Among the "ventriloquists" are Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson and Johnson, who said in a plug for the event (have your sick bucket ready): "It's an honour to be part of Saudi Arabia's golf journey from the onset." Pressed by reporters, Johnson has also said: "I'm going over there to play a sport I'm paid to play. It's my job to play golf. Unfortunately, it's in a part of the world where most people don't agree with what happened, and I definitely don't support anything like that."
It is a PR stunt. Non-participation ... in some marginal way makes a statement about human rights. By participating, [the players] are ventriloquists for this abhorrent, reprehensible regime.
Good to know the former world No1 does not "agree with" murder and dismemberment. Smiles will be fixed, the players will play and everyone will go home richer. At least, some will say, the discussion was had.
Except it was not. One part of it was, but the myopia that allows us to suddenly alight on one small corner of the picture while ignoring everything around it is fully in play here.
To be clear, Khashoggi's murder was abominable, an outrage. Officials in Turkey and the US have stated with "high confidence" that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination. For anyone in golf to want to draw attention to this is honourable.
Across the world, though, there is a reflex urge to address the sins of foreign governments while ignoring those of our own. In the Saudi context, this means increasing arms sales to the House of Saud and effectively conspiring in the deaths of 85,000 children in Yemen.
Over to Human Rights Watch, which says in its World Report 2019: "As the leader of a coalition that began military operations against the Houthis in Yemen on March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia has committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law.
"Human Rights Watch has documented about 90 apparently unlawful attacks by the coalition that have hit homes, markets, hospitals, schools and mosques. Some of these attacks may amount to war crimes. On May 15, just weeks before the Saudi authorities lifted the ban on women driving on June 24, authorities began a wave of arrests of prominent women's rights activists, and accused several of them of grave crimes like treason that appear to be directly related to their activism.
"By November at least nine women remain detained without charge, though some anticipated charges could carry prison terms of up to 20 years. In November, Human Rights Watch received reports that Saudi interrogators tortured at least three of the women, including with electric shocks and whippings, and forcibly hugged and kissed them."
What we have here, through golf, and then far beyond, is a selective objection to one specific outrage and a wider blindness and amnesia about geopolitics: of which the UK and US are horribly guilty.
Since the start of the war in Yemen, the UK has licensed at least $4.7 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and stands with the US as a prop to a regime now inviting the world for a few rounds of golf.
My point is, yes, the field for the Saudi International has dollar signs in its eyes, but the pact signed by these players is agreed to just about every day in international sport.
England contested a World Cup in Russia — accused of poisoning people in Salisbury with Novichok.
The 2022 World Cup is still scheduled for Qatar — accused of being a funding source for Isis.
This is not whataboutery or moral relativism. For us to attach moral burdens to golfers is fair only if our own governments and societies are doing everything possible to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, halting arms sales and defending human rights in Saudi Arabia. We are doing nothing of the sort. The world is complicit — for the money.
