On the eve of the 103rd PGA Championship, in a column entitled “Clandestine Kiawah meeting with PGA Tour agents could be the Saudis’ Waterloo”, Golfweek columnist Eamon Lynch had a lengthy piece trying to convince the readers that the proposed Premier League Golf is dead before it is born, but instead of analyzing the idea, the reactions from the players and agents; he mostly unleashed his anger against the country behind the source of the funding, Saudi Arabia.
Using many sentences and expressions that are not up to the standards of the game of golf and that we are not going to quote, he went to the point to call the proposed competition a “Saudi Super League”, that players will be owned by Saudi and be told were and when to work. In his own explanation if we assume that the funding is coming from somewhere else or from a private bank, would he be open to make this assumption and write the same sentences?
He then started Mocking some things in Saudi Arabia, and sarcastically asking hypothetical questions to the superstars about how bad things are in the country. These questions and assumptions are not true, and they do not reflect a great nation such as Saudi Arabia.
After reading the piece couple of times, we got the feeling that his main intention was to criticize Saudi Arabia more than talking about the proposed breakthrough, by not giving ideas or analysis of the new proposed Premier Golf League and focusing mainly in trashing a country is wrong in our opinion. Would he do the same if the prosed league is funded by a bank for example, would he go looking for the bad things related to this bank to write in his article.
On the other hand, the writer did not take in consideration any of the efforts Saudi Arabia is making to grow the sport of golf in the country and in the region, the initiatives to grow the game in the country and among ladies specifically, the many tournaments that it sponsor on the European Tour and The Ladies European Tour in order to increase the popularity of the game. The developments happening in the country in all areas of life, the country is becoming more and more open to the world and many great things are happening. But for him it was easy to point the fingers at some wrong assumptions and build his anger around it.
The game of golf has a long way to go in the region to reach the competitive level, and we should take every opportunity to develop it, applaud and support the organizations that are trying to make golf more popular in the region. Instead of writing things that are merely assumptions and unleash the anger against a country based on those assumptions, let us focus on how we can make the game better, this kind of articles are not helping unfortunately.
As golf fans, we do not like the idea of the Premier Golf League, and we will not support it whatever the case. The writer did not clarify his position though, is he against the idea only because it is supposedly funded by Saudi? or is he against the idea in general. Would he support the idea if it is funded by private bank like the failed European Super League?
We love the game of golf and we want the best for the game, the Premiere Golf league is a project that looks real by the day, and it’s not the best for the game; there are many players that are supporting it, and if we do not do the necessary to prevent it, it will become a reality and then it will be too late to criticize it or just unleash the anger.
