It’s good to see that legendary choke artist Greg Norman is still choking a bit. It wasn’t a major championship lead this time, it was a hot take that’s pretty hot even for someone earning a shilling for a new golf league. The former No. 1 golfer spoke at a promotional event for the new Saudi-backed LIV golf league offered quite a streamlining for an alleged government-led operation that led to the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“This whole thing about Saudi Arabia and Khashoggi and human rights, talk about it, but also talk about the good that the country is doing by changing its culture,” said Norman, chairman of LIV Golf, its most notable achievement One shot in golf was Six-Stroke Masters lead in 1996.
“Look, we’ve all made mistakes and you just want to learn from those mistakes and how to correct them in the future.”
If you don’t remember the US intelligence report stating that Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, orchestrated a conspiracy that led to the assassination of a Washington Post journalist, that was a pretty big deal and definitely not “Mistake”. according to the motto: leave the garage door open. It’s also probably one of the reasons why Phil Mickelson called the Saudis “creepy motherfuckers”. There was even f made about it. Of course, bin Salman denies any involvement.
If you want more from Norman defending his new business partners to an unapologetically heinous degree, you’re in luck because he wasn’t done yet.
“I didn’t have a face-to-face conversation with MBS, I never met the guy, but at the same time I read that the Saudi government has made its statements and comments on it and it wants to move forward,” Norman said Wednesday.
First of all, you don’t get ahead after a murder, You’re moving to a prison cell.
Second, there’s no better way to make a person sound disarming than to address them by their initials. BShut Salman isn’t Neil Patrick Harris, no one affectionately refers to him as MBS – except maybe BFF and the well-known humanitarian plague Jared Kushner. (When is it coming? How I met your mother spin off, How I met your killer, start with MBS and Kush? And does the schtick of MBS jovially pick up and dismember journalists?)
This isn’t the first time Norman has been a level above in pimping the LIV golf league. Earlier this month, he said Mickelson’s comments were what prompted players to defect en masse.
Yes, Shark, it was Phil’s fat mouth and not the murder of Khashoggi or the Saudis’ track record on human rights. There really are a number of reasons to avoid doing business with bin Salman, and perhaps Mickelson, breathing his spikes off the record, threw the spotlight on these cons, but any idiot with the internet could with a quick find out google search.
Well, maybe not some idiot.
PGA rejects golfer’s request to play LIV event in June
I’m not sure if the PGA Tour is trying to save their players from the same mistake Mickelson made, or if they actually view the LIV league as a rival, but whatever the case, Golfers are not allowed to participate in the inaugural event of LIV in London in early June.
The tournament takes place on the same weekend as the tour’s RBC Canadian Open stop, so there are obviously competing interests.
“As a membership organization, we believe this decision is in the best interests of the PGA Tour and its players,” said Tyler Dennis, the Tour’s senior vice president and chief of operations, in a Explanation.
Players like Scottie Scheffler and Will Zalatoris supported the Tour’s decision, with Scheffler saying he “kind of thought that was going to happen” and Zalatoris calling the move “the perfect answer”.
Right now the PGA has all the leverage and jerks like Norman and Mickelson are only hurting the case of a rival league. I couldn’t give a fuck about the LIV league or its long-term viability. If ever there was a rival group worth backfiring on an expensive investment, it’s the Saudis.
However, there is a real case for lower level players getting the graphite wave in terms of compensation and wages. Mickelson even donned a cape for her cause – assuming it appears he did motivated by its own financial deficits rather than the cause of his PGA peers. Regardless, Lefty’s buffoon doesn’t negate the report that most professional golfers are “struggling with themselves” due to the Tour’s independent contracting model.
Is anyone really surprised that the people with the most resentment and the least power are screwed and forgotten as a result of this whole mess? Absolutely not.
With the PGA Championship starting next week in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tiger Woods and Mickelson are on the field, and Norman and the Saudis will still have heaps of blood money to comfort them as the LIV League erupts in flames.
Oh well. So life is.
