A Republican lawmaker tore into PGA Tour executives during a Tuesday hearing over their looming billion-dollar merger with Saudi-backed LIV Golf following the shock announcement last month that the rivals were joining forces.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) grilled PGA CEO Ron Price about his organization’s intense anti-LIV lobbying activity in the lead-up to the agreement.
“Public reports say that you paid lobbyists last year in one quarter, just one quarter of the year, six figures or more as — to lobby Congress on the Saudi golf league proposals,” Hawley said. “What was that related to?”
“Senator, we went to members of Congress as we faced a very threat to our existence to make them aware of what the [Saudi] Public Investment Fund [PIF] was attempting to do through its operations of the LIV Golf series,” Price replied.
“And so, make Congress aware and ask it for what? What did you want this body to do?” Hawley added.
“Senator, anything that the Congress could do within its power to help preserve an American institution,” Price said.
“But this is before you agreed to take a billion dollars from the same people that you were lobbying against a year ago?” Hawley pointed out.
“Senator, we faced a choice,” Price responded. “One was to allow professional golf to be taken over and operated by the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The second was to allow the PGA Tour to continue to lead it in accordance with our mission and our values, for the benefit of our players and charity.”
PGA executives have taken heat after announcing their alliance with LIV in June. The Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, which is run by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has invested $2 billion into the rebel tour, according to reports.
Star players such as Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson — who signed multimillion-dollar contracts with the Saudi golf league — will also be eligible for PGA events on the new-look tour, despite past rules that barred them from competition.
Critics say LIV is being used as a tool by the Saudi government to make the public forget its ties to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, purportedly on the orders of MBS.
“Today’s hearing is about much more than the game of golf,” Sen. Richard Blumethal (D-Conn.), the chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “It’s about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence — indeed even take over a cherished American institution — to cleanse its public image.”
Not all Republicans on the subcommittee were as hard on the PGA as Hawley. Subcommittee ranking member Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) acknowledged that “there’s nothing wrong with the PGA Tour negotiating its survival.”
“Today’s hearing is about much more than the game of golf,” Sen. Richard Blumethal (D-Conn.), the chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “It’s about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence — indeed even take over a cherished American institution — to cleanse its public image.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), said LIV Golf was one of many examples of distasteful regimes using sports to improve their standing in the eyes of the world.
“What was China doing when they hosted the Olympics but a few years ago, but sportswashing? Trying to wash their enslavement of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Muslims. Trying to sportswash their purchase of thousands of United States farmland acres. To sportswash their research into bioterrorism weapons,” Marshall asked. “Why aren’t we investigating those issues? Why aren’t we investigating that 90% of the counterfeits that come into this country are made in China? 90% of the fentanyl that comes in this country is made in China. They steal $500 billion of intellectual property from us every year. Those are the things that we should be investigating.”
Marshall also suggested that the panel had more pressing issues to deal with.
“Today we’re here on the Subcommittee on Investigations of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security. And I’m trying to figure out why this issue was raised to this level,” he said. “I gotta tell you, no one back home has asked me ‘Hey, what’s the Senate think about this merger?’”
“At the same time, every day, somebody asks me, ‘Why were we funding viral gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China?’ They ask me ‘Why is the CDC now pushing a medication that’s not safe to be used to help biological men make a milk-like substance?’” Marshall went on. “And they asked me about the president’s son, and they’re concerned that he’s running a criminal enterprise out of the White House. And now more questions than answers on the cocaine found in the White House. Those are the questions that people ask me about — why aren’t we investigating them?”
Marshall concluded his statement by telling Blumenthal that he had no questions for Price or PGA Tour policy board member Jimmy Dunne, “but I do want to wish the very best of success to Topeka, Kansas’s own PGA great, Gary Woodland. We’re very proud of him.”