Sharon Kennedy: The PGA and the Saudis

I like Steve Schmidt. Although he’s a former Republican strategist, he’s a straight shooter. He never minces his words. He doesn’t yell or wave his hands or wear a baseball cap. He doesn’t resort to catchy slogans. He shows no emotion except a steely determination to speak the truth. He’s intelligent and keeps cuss words to a minimum. At the end of his eight-minute spiel, he might say “hell” or “damn,” not to excite his audience, but to express his outrage.

A couple times a week I listen to his podcast. He reports things that often go unnoticed or are barely given more than a 30-second sound bite for a day or two. Last Tuesday my ears perked up when Schmidt reported on the merger of the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf. Despite the fact that No. 45 called the merger “a beautiful, glamorous deal for the world of golf,” not all professional golfers agreed with him. Tiger Woods is probably one of them. He refused a lot of money when the Saudis wanted to pinch him from the PGA. A lot of money was offered Woods — somewhere in the amount of $800 million. Unlike other professionals who jumped ship when offered bushels of cash, Woods remained faithful. In light of the recent merger, he’s probably thinking he should have banked the money and abandoned his loyalty to the Professional Golfers’ Association.

For people who don’t follow golf and have never heard of LIV, the letters stand for the Roman numeral 54 which is the perfect score if every hole on a par-72 course is birdied. Although our former president was overjoyed at the prospect of a merger promising to pump enormous amounts of cash into his golf courses, family members who lost loved ones on 9/11 were not so pleased. If you haven’t heard it, here’s a quote from them: “The PGA & Monahan [Commissioner of the PGA Tour] appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so Americans and the world will forget they spent billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism.” As Schmidt reminded us, let’s not forget that 15 of the 19 terrorists were Saudis.

So what does this mean to U.S. citizens and why should we be concerned? I don’t play golf and have no interest in the game. The PGA Tour and LIV mean nothing to me except to ask why a sport that was founded on integrity, decency and fair-play would want to be in league with the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his murderous regime. What does it mean for the future of our country when sports and foreign policies merge with the blessing of a former president?

Does it matter that golf clubs of No. 45 host events intertwining business and politics? Is it possible some of the classified documents “missing” from Mar-a-Logo are in the hands of the Crown Prince? How could draining a swimming pool have resulted in “flooding” an IT storage room? Is this a repeat of water-damaged Grand Hyatt Hotel files “discarded” in 1988 when New York City auditors requested them or is it just bad luck that floods keep occurring in Donald’s wake? Make up your own mind.

Schmidt ended his podcast by saying, “The PGA has been hijacked and it’s not the first time the Saudis have hijacked an American vessel.” I’d say that — along with 45’s recent indictment — is pretty good food for thought.

— To contact Sharon Kennedy, send her an email at authorsharonkennedy.com. Kennedy's new book, "View from the SideRoad: A Collection of Upper Peninsula Stories," is available from her or Amazon.

This article originally appeared on The Sault News: Sharon Kennedy: The PGA and the Saudis