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Opinion | How Saudi Arabia is teeing up for global golf and disrupting the West’s dominance
- The Middle Eastern country, renowned for its oil and dubious human rights record, is using huge amounts of wealth to fund sports including golf
- Rebel circuit LIV Golf, backed by Saudi Arabia, is now pushing to merge with the US PGA and European DP World Tours after two years of disputes
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Professional golf – and increasingly world sport – is caught in a sand trap. Not the familiar hazard between fairway and green, but the Middle Eastern desert producing enormous quantities of fossil fuels.
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The resulting riches are being diverted into sport, disrupting its traditional Western dominance.
The latest example is the dramatic announcement that LIV Golf, the rebel circuit led by retired Australian golfer Greg Norman and backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is merging with the US PGA and European DP World Tours after two years of trench warfare.
While today’s big story is LIV Golf, Saudi Arabia’s involvement in sport will generate many more money-driven, politics-heavy headlines.
Welcome to the ‘party hole’
There are echoes here of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and Rupert Murdoch’s Super (Rugby) League. An aggressive, well-funded competitor takes on the sport establishment, promising to shake up a rigid game, and bringing in new money and younger fans with lashings of razzmatazz.
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