Learned Helplessness and Covering Men’s Pro Golf
A shift in how LIV Golf is being covered has been noticed, and our Adam Fonseca wonders where golf media’s energy and outrage went.
A funny thing happened over the weekend in the world of men’s professional golf and Mother Nature was the catalyst.
The PGA TOUR’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was shortened to 54 holes after a severe weather system moved through the Monterey Peninsula, thus crowning Wyndham Clark the champion after Sunday’s final round was canceled. This meant that many golf fans chose to watch LIV Golf’s 2024 debut at Mayakoba in Mexico, where Joaquin Niemann defeated Sergio Garcia in a playoff.
For many fans, this may have been the first time they’ve ever watched a LIV Golf event. The controversial tour enters its third season with the support of more television coverage in more markets, coupled with the addition of Jon Rahm’s “Legion 13” team into the mix. Those of us who are chronically online and pay much too close attention to this sort of thing also noticed how Golf Twitter shifted its snark and attention to watching LIV. It was as amusing to notice as it was disappointing, especially since many of the individual accounts from Golf Media’s most popular commentators were suddenly… objectively watching the tournament?
Before I go on, allow me this preface. It is not lost on me that many of these media types are paid to comment on all things pro golf. It’s their job in every sense of the word, and LIV Golf appears to be alive, well and thriving. Therefore, it is no surprise that these media personalities must now comment on a segment of pro golf that they were openly ridiculing mere months prior.
But this doesn’t mean I have to like it.
When LIV burst onto the scene, it was in the midst of the most confusing and anxiety-inducing period of a generation. The pandemic was roaring, social upheaval was brewing, and at least here in the US, political divisiveness had never been worse. Fans of golf required a distraction, and it created ample opportunity for a disruptor like LIV to emerge. At a time when every aspect of life’s status quo was being questioned, LIV offered the proverbial “Why not us?” to golf’s fandom.
What followed was an onslaught of debate among golf’s media, including most of us taking holier than thou stances against the upstart league. Most of us hated that LIV’s funding came from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) due to the kingdom’s abhorrent civil rights record. Others hated that the PGA TOUR was no longer the only show in town; a sports league that we grew up watching and idolizing. And, yes, golf media also grew fearful of what might happen to the golf tour they were paid to cover for their careers.
It felt like the only thing to do was to protect one’s self interests, and that included going on social media and criticsizing LIV Golf into oblivion. Or at least try to. Obviously, this didn’t work.
Here is where I’m going to lose some of you reading this.
On its surface, LIV Golf has remained unchanged. The addition of a few names — and continued rumors of other names yet to be revealed — doesn’t change anything about the tour’s origins, financial backers, or ulterior motives. They’ve just persevered and hung around longer than we expected, despite multiple attempts to dissolve their legitimacy and legality. LIV Golf knew this would happen if they just survived. They were right.
The result: we are now seeing dozens of media outlets and their employees turning an about-face on their coverage of LIV.
To be fair: we’ve not reached the point where ESPN, CBS, or any of the major independent outlets are inviting LIV players into TV studios or onto podcasts. But if this weekend’s social media commentary is any indication, it’ll happen soon enough.
Where did all of the energy go? Was the outrage that many expressed in the wake of LIV’s debut all for show? Fake outrage is nothing new among journalists, but this feels like a rapid 180 among some outlets and their journalists. Did everyone hop on a conference call and suddenly decide, “Welp, we still need to get paid to cover golf, so we better change our tune?” Of course this happened, at least in the proverbial sense.
A few days ago I noticed this gem from our friend Will Bardwell, which pretty much sums everything up nicely.
This was the plan from LIV all along. They knew that golf media would simply stop caring as much at some point. Truthfully, I probably knew this, too. It’s a hard thing to admit, and it’s a tale as old as time.
Let’s make something abundantly clear: LIV Golf is an opportunistic organization that serves a dual purpose. For their players, it’s an “escape” from the constrictive nature of the PGA TOUR to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. For Saudi Arabia, it’s one-hundred-percent, without a doubt sportswashing. Both things can be true at the same time, and they are not pretending like it’s anything different. In fact, LIV brass straight up told us so.
To my media colleagues — both independent and otherwise — you have a choice here. You can continue to take your stand against something you truly do not believe in from a moral perspective. That doesn’t have to change, and any employer that asks you to do otherwise is not worth your time. Yes, this is a very easy thing for me to say, and I am well aware of the complexities of staying employed and toeing the company line.
You have another choice: just come clean. We all criticized players jumping to LIV and their ridiculous rationalizations for doing so when we all knew they were just doing it for the money. You have the chance to stand up, say something to the tune of, “I have to cover this league now, so you are going to see me start doing that as objectively as I can” and then move on. We will understand.
But to simply shift your perspective overnight comes off as disingenuous at best and hypocritical at worst. We all do things in our day jobs that we don’t like to do because our bosses ask us to, so why not just call it out and clear the air? I may be naive in this, but taking a moment to offer anything to your readers in this regard could go a long way.
Speaking only for myself and not my teammates at GU: I cannot support LIV, I will not support LIV, and people will disagree with me about that. And that’s OK.
All I ask is that you make your stance known publicly and then continue to do the best job you can to cover the game while staying true to yourself.
Sportswashing confirmed on LIV Golf, but does anyone care?
The quiet parts have been said out loud and sportswashing is no longer an assumption of LIV Golf. But does anyone actually care?
Diffusing a situation or a narrative can come in many forms. Sometimes the best path forward is to simply call things as they are and remove all doubt. “Saying the quiet part out loud” is risky, but often times the backlash from doing so is more tame than the intrigue and rumors that would otherwise swirl.
Then there’s what Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown price of Saudi Arabia, did this week.
As LIV Golf makes its return to the “Chicago” area — despite being 50 miles away from Chicago proper — the Tour’s leadership is calling it like it is.
MBS, a main figurehead in the creation of LIV Golf, admitted in an interview this week that sportswashing is precisely what his regime’s interest in sports is based upon.
"If sportswashing [is] going to increase my GDP [gross domestic product] by way of 1%, then I will continue doing sportwashing," he said, according to Foxnews.com. "I don't care."
The crown prince’s admittance and use of the term sportswashing — a practice used to improve one’s reputation tarnished by wrongdoing — is in some ways a relief. Ever since LIV Golf burst onto the scene two years ago journalists and golf fans alike have been whispering the term around the proverbial water cooler. Indeed, everyone knew what an underlying goal of LIV was and some chose to ignore while others vehemently opposed its creation.
But now there can be no question as to the purpose of LIV from the Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) perspective. All doubt has been removed and we are all faced with a simple choice:
Do we care or not?
Let’s put everything out on the table here. If we are honest with ourselves, fandom around LIV Golf falls into a few categories. While golf as a sport is traditionally conservative, there are pockets of liberalism and progressiveness alive and well. Amid a time where United States society has (arguably) never been more divisive, LIV Golf has captured the attention of far-right golf fans. This has a lot to do with Donald Trump’s involvement in the upstart golf league from the perspective of hosting multiple events at his golf courses.
Trust me: I know I’ve lost some readers of this article already because of the preceding paragraph. For those who are still here, let’s continue.
Make no mistake: LIV Golf and those behind the tour very much have politics in mind. This is also true for most global sports to some degree; it’s unavoidable. Sports and politics are a marriage that is alive and well with no signs of separating any time soon. Where there are millions of dollars and fans to be found, governments and political interests are not far behind.
The bigger question that has always engrossed Saudi Arabia’s interest in global sports is one of morality. The kingdom’s human rights record is well documented, and it isn’t pretty (to say the least). Just last month reports of Saudi Arabian citizens being detained (or worse) for comments made on Twitter/X once again exemplified the reach of MBS and his leaders.
The question of whether or not sports fans should care about any of this is complicated. There is no doubt Saudi Arabia will continue to infiltrate global sports more than it already has, especially in the United States. It is not outlandish to suspect the NFL, NBA, or the MLB has fielded a phone call or two from the PIF in recent years.
In fact, every walk of life is funded if not influenced to some degree by money invested by the PIF. As many social media keyboard warriors love to point out, this includes the cars we drive, products we buy, and what we choose for entertainment. This is the world in which we live, like it or not.
To take the stance of avoiding anything that receives funding from the PIF is a fool’s errand, no matter one’s take on morality or politics. But this is where the illusion of choice flourishes, especially in the context of choosing to support an organization like LIV Golf of the PGA TOUR. Choosing to support or ignore isn’t as simple as a binary option like hot or cold.
As is the case with most things in life: it’s complicated. Removing all doubt of the intent behind LIV Golf complicated things further, leaving golf fans in a precarious position if not downright confused by it all.
MBS knew this, because what are we actually going to do about it?
