The wild scenes that accompanied the LIV golf tournament in Adelaide over the weekend have highlighted the moral hypocrisy of those who shunned the event on the grounds it was “funded” by Saudi human rights abusers while at same time heralding a profound shift that may save a sport facing generational decline.
Images of tens of thousands of young people flocking to a golf course 20 minutes outside the Adelaide CBD, suggest the grand worthies of golf have been left blindsided by a people’s movement whose scale, or even existence, they had utterly failed to appreciate.
Greg Norman with SA Premier Peter Malinauskas ahead of LIV Golf Adelaide at The Grange Golf Club on the weekend.Credit: Getty Images
Useful idiots in the media, many of whom have parroted the tired line that the petro-dollars funding the LIV tour are dirty, have once again misread the public mood, erroneously assuming the sporting public would – like them – take their moral cues from the US PGA, a commercial rival to the LIV and the wellspring of much of the event’s criticism.
And standing triumphant above it all is Greg Norman – a flawed character to be sure, but one ultimately vindicated by the incredible scenes on the ground.
How did this major international event end up in Adelaide?
Charming though the Barossa may be, it seems likely the organiser’s preference was to hold the event in a tier-one eastern seaboard city. The failure of the NSW Government to land the tour was therefore deeply unfortunate. This was an event worth fighting for – three days of global advertising for the host; tens of thousands of tourists descending on the city; three years of pent-up post COVID demand, and dollars, waiting to be unleashed into the local economy.
If the enthusiasm of any NSW government campaign was tempered by uncertainty as to where public opinion would land on the ethics of the tour, there has been a demonstrable miscalculation.
It took the South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas, to puncture the selective moralism of those attempting to impugn the Saudi Arabian source of funding: “This is about a golf tournament … we choose as a country to actively trade with Saudi Arabia, the largest economy within the Middle East, and we do that knowingly, without at any step of the way compromising what we collectively believe in as a country.”
It is unusual in the modern day to hear a leader take a stand against a tide of reflexive, if superficial, attempts to stake out the high moral ground on a political issue. Malinauskas must have seen these critiques coming from a mile off, but he stuck his neck out for his state and the people have supported his position.
He could, of course, have gone further. He could have pointed to the conduct of the state Labor leaders in Victoria and Western Australia who said nothing to defend their South Australian counterpart as they led trade delegations to China, a country whose human rights abuses tower in scale, if not in substance, over anything the Saudis could ever manage.
And to be clear, the Saudis can manage quite a bit.
No one familiar with the shocking murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi journalist who was kidnapped, tortured and dismembered within the walls of the Saudi Embassy in Turkey can be in any doubt about the regime’s crimes, to say nothing of its mistreatment of women. But morality selectively applied is no morality at all.
The hypocrisy of the “sportswashing” argument levelled against the Saudis is obvious when one considers that this is the same regime that has for decades put petrol in our cars or whose sovereign wealth fund has invested billions of dollars in Uber.
It is an argument made by people who are presumably unaware that they are repeating the talking points disseminated by the United States PGA Tour, an organisation which has controlled global professional golf for decades and whose commercial prospects are mortally threatened by the existence of a rival tour.
Supporters of Cameron Smith’s Ripper GC team at LIV Golf Adelaide.Credit: Getty
Nor is it the case that these US gatekeepers have done a sterling job husbanding the game. The US PGA Tour has shown no interest in Australia whatsoever.
With precious few of the best golfers bothering to turn up here to play since the 1970s, the game is now flagging at a grassroots level. Memberships are down, young people seem to prefer TikTok, and “leaders” now propose the re-purposing of golf facilities on the eve of elections.
For as long as golf maintains the trappings of an elitist, unchanging, and unwelcoming bastion of tut-tutting baby boomers, it will deserve every piece of community vitriol that it receives.
Golf can still have its tradition – there is a rich history to the game which many will choose to familiarise themselves with and uphold. But unless it sets about actively appealing to the masses it is on the way out.
This was the beauty of the LIV event.
For a few days, the sport’s stuffy image was smashed by a kind of people’s uprising, a fact obvious to anyone who has seen snippets of the footage. There is obviously room for refinement – less throwing of beer cans, perhaps – but these are details at the margins. Whatever one might say about the event, it was popular, raucous, and democratic. There was something thrilling in the air as the establishment stood by perplexed while a new generation flooded the zone.
Whatever one might say about Malinauskas, he took a serious risk and pulled it off. Let us hope that when the time comes the new residents of Macquarie Street show the same courage and foresight.
Steve Boland is a barrister and a golf course weekend warrior.
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