FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The PGA Tour is robbing fans by preventing LIV Golf participants from playing in PGA Tour events, according to a lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County.
The civil lawsuit, filed Tuesday on behalf of Larry Klayman and against the PGA Tour and its partner, DP World Tour [European Tour], is seeking class-action status and says suspending golfers who play in the LIV tournaments robs PGA golf fans of seeing some of the best golfers in the world and is “anti-competitive behavior” in a free-market economy.
The PGA Tour, with headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, announced it has suspended 17 golfers, including big names such as Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, who played in the rival LIV Tour debut event in London on June 9-11 without a conflicting-event exemption.
The lawsuit claims, in part, “Using the phony pretext of Saudi financing of the LIV Golf Tour [as the PGA Tour and DP World Tour also significantly benefit from a huge amount of Saudi and Arab money] these defendants have flagrantly sought, through their anti-competitive actions, to harm Florida consumers who would attend PGA Tour and its admitted partner DP World Tour golfing tournaments, by suspending and fining professional golfers who were formerly on these golf tours, simply because they signed up to play in LIV Golf Tour tournaments and events.”
The Saudi-owned LIV Golf Tour, whose CEO is golf legend Greg Norman, is financed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, an arm of the Saudi Arabian government.
The controversy regarding LIV Golf has been framed by some as the Saudi government “sportswashing,” or cleansing via sports, its reputation. The “sportswashing” crowd also accuses LIV Golf members of being active participants in that cleansing.
The Saudi involvement has raised questions because Saudi Arabia is accused by the United States and others of numerous human rights violations, including the death of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, as well as oppressing women and homosexuals. Saudi Arabia had also been tied to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center because 15 of the 19 hijackers, as well as Osama bin Laden, were Saudi Arabian.
A group of 9/11 survivors recently wrote a letter to PGA Tour members thanking them for spurning the LIV Tour.
The letter said, in part, “Some of your fellow PGA Tour members have traded their dreams of earned success for easy money — indeed, blood money — whether they need those funds or not. They include some of the richest in the field, who justify their roles in Saudi Arabia’s efforts to sportswash by simply, and astoundingly, looking the other way. They do so casually when asked the hard questions or are faced with the uncomfortable truth: That they are helping one of the world’s worst regimes paper over its crimes.”
In response, before the U.S. Open earlier this month, Mickelson said, “I think I speak for pretty much every American in that we feel the deepest of sympathy and the deepest of empathy for those that have lost loved ones, friends in 9/11.
“It affected all of us, and those that have been directly affected, I think I can’t emphasize enough how much empathy I have for them.”
The LIV Tour is so-called because LIV, in Roman numerals, is 54, the score a golfer would shoot if they birdied every hole of a par-72 course. LIV, or 54, is also the number of holes played during a three-day tournament, which is LIV’s format, as opposed to the four-day format of the PGA Tour.
The LIV Tour hosts its first U.S. event beginning Thursday at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club outside of Portland, Ore. The eight-event tour played its first tournament last week in London and will have four events in the United States.
The LIV Tour’s championship event will be held Oct. 27-30 at Trump National Doral Miami.
