Tiger Woods vs Saudi Arabia: How the greatest golfer ever is leading PGA fight against regime-backed rebel tour
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: On Tuesday, August 16, Tiger Woods addressed the PGA Tour's plans in the meeting of top golf players as they fought back against LIV Golf's threat. Recently, there have been reports on how LIV Golf is becoming a threat to PGA Tours.
According to DailyMail, Woods flew down to Wilmington in his private jet. Meanwhile, he discussed the threat of the Saudi-funded LIV Golf invitational series ahead of the BMW Championship. Though Woods did not qualify for the second FedEx Cup playoff event, he made sure to fly to attend a conference of 22 players that lasted for three-and-a-half hours.
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Why PGA is against LIV Golf League?
In an earlier interview with Fox News, Greg Norman, CEO of LIV Golf League, stated one of the reasons behind major players staying away from the league is due to its funding from Saudi Arabian government. He took a dig at the PGA Tour saying, "The PGA tour, I think, has about 27 sponsors who do 40-plus billion dollars worth of annual business on an annual basis in Saudi Arabia," Later he added, "Why doesn’t the PGA tour call the CEOs of [these businesses] saying that we can’t do business with you because you are doing business with Saudi Arabia? Why are they picking on the professional golfers?".
He has also stated how PGA is unwilling to accept another high-level US golf tour because it threatens the monopoly they've long enjoyed. "It is a monopoly. They just want to shut us down whatever way they can," he said, "so they will use whatever leverage point they can," stated Greg.
What happened at the PGA Tour Meeting?
Meanwhile, Rory McIlroy confirmed Woods's attendance at the meeting. He told DailyMail, "We're all great players but we're not Tiger Woods, he is the hero that we've all looked up to and his voice carries further than anyone else's in the game of golf. His role is navigating us to a place where we all think we should be". He further added, "I think it's pretty apparent that whenever we all get in the room there's an alpha in there and it's not me. He cares a lot."
However, the attendees remained tight-lipped to the media regarding what are the various new steps or actions proposed in the meeting. Last week, LIV Golf indicated a more significant role from Woods in preventing the league to be successful accusing the PGA Tour of getting him to 'publicly criticize' younger players for switching. Greg has already confirmed, that Woods turned down a huge deal of $700M-$800M with the LIV Golf series, "That number has been out there, yes, Tiger is a needle mover. So course you got to look at the best of the best. They had originally approached Tiger before I became CEO," he said, "adding, "yes, that number is somewhere in that neighborhood." said Greg in the Fox News interview.