“The people I’m dealing with had nothing to do with [9/11], and if someone can find someone that unequivocally was involved with it, I’ll kill them myself.”
They are the words of PGA Tour director Jimmy Dunne, the man who reached out with an olive branch to the Saudi backers of LIV Golf to reach a peace-deal last week that will revolutionise the game globally.
A study of the timeline shows the appointment of Dunne, a private banker with three decades of mergers and acquisitions behind him, may have been appointed to the PGA Tour board last November to find a solution to a costly legal split in the sport.
Dunne’s company was based in New York’s Twin Towers. The day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks he’d left the office hoping to qualify for a golf tournament. While he was gone 66 of his co-workers died, part of the nearly 3,000 who lost their lives that day.
Last year he said he was not the right person to judge whether the Saudis should be involved in golf because not a day goes by that he is not affected by the trauma. Turns out he was the perfect man for the job.
“Every day the first thing I think about is that. Several times during the day I think about it. And the last thing I think about at night is that,” Dunne told the Golf Channel this past week.
“And I’m not alone in that. I would guarantee that every one of those family members has that same condition. It is just a reality of how unbelievably sad and awful that day was.
“But the reality of it is, we need to come together as a people, even our country, we have too much divisiveness.
“And at some point in time, whether it’s our view of the Japanese, or our view of the Germans, there’s a point in time where you have to say, let’s try to get to know one another, let’s try to understand, let’s try to demonstrate by example.”
The man on the other end of the phone when Dunne called some weeks ago was the governor of Saudi Arabia’s trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan — the man with the purse strings at the Public Investment Fund known as PIF, the fund bankrolling the rebel LIV Golf series.
“He just called me and introduced himself and said he’d love for us to meet,” al Rumayyan told CNBC when details of the partnership were announced.
“And I asked him ‘would you like us to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement)?’, and he said ‘no, there is no need’. That kind of trust is how we started the relationship.”
Two lunches and a round of golf in London followed. Now there are plans for LIV, the PGA Tour, and Europe’s DP World Tour to have their assets valued and plans drawn up to pivot golf into another era “in a matter of weeks”, a plan said to include new courses, new tournaments and growth plans.
The Saudis are accused of sportswashing. The memory of murdered journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi is constantly invoked in media reports as though the reason Saudi Arabia is making a foray into sport is to make us forget about that man’s tragic demise in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and other human rights abuses.
Instead, what the golf deal shows is that as heinous as such crimes are, the stakes involved in strategic global alignments are much higher, and the USA is willing to look beyond human rights abuses when necessary.
As they have done previously.
The man who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, had dozens of family members living and studying in the US at the time of the attacks. They knew nothing of the terrorist plot.
They were assisted by the FBI in fleeing the country in secret, as they held fears for their safety. The wider Bin Laden family had been regular donors of millions of dollars to US Universities.
Sport is a late addition to the suite of investments PIF already has in the USA including in more than 50 companies such as Microsoft, Zoom, Amazon, Uber, BlackRock and America’s largest bank JP Morgan Chase.
But the focus on Saudi Arabia in golf’s partnership ignores the significant role America has played in ending the division, and why.
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Golf’s announcement does not exist in a silo.
The USA’s U-turn on Saudi involvement in the sport comes at an interesting time.
There is tension between the world’s two biggest economies – China and the USA.
In March, a deal brokered by China saw Saudi Arabia and Iran agree to restore diplomatic ties, reopening embassies in each other’s capitals which also saw the start of peace talks to end an eight year proxy war in Yemen.
Almost 1,000 people have been released so far in a negotiated prisoner exchange.
In April of this year, Saudi Arabia was one of five Arab countries reported to have expressed an interest in joining the BRICS alliance — the bloc’s founding members being Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
In the same week the so-called merger in the sport of US presidents was announced, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was meeting with Saudi’s Crown Prince, Muhammed Bin Salman, and foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud.
“When President Biden travelled to Jeddah last summer, he affirmed the importance of the Middle East to the long-term security and economic interests of the United States,” secretary Blinken told the media in Riyadh.
“And he made clear that we’re committed to continuing and deepening our partnerships in the region.
“Together, we can drive real progress for all our people, not only to address the challenges or crises of the moment, but to chart an affirmative vision for our shared future.”
In response the Saudis had their own message, that the established rules of doing business and making deals have changed.
The global rules-based order established after WWII was devised by the west to benefit the west. Now there are others who want a seat at the table, and the established rules are being challenged.
While the golf partnership was not raised at the Riyadh press conference prince Faisal’s comments were highly relevant.
“You ask about human rights, you asked about reform,” Saudis foreign minister told the packed room.
“I think it’s well known we have gone through a significant reform process in the Kingdom.
“What we do in the Kingdom we do based on our assessment of what’s in the best interests of our country and its driven really by the needs and desires of the Saudi people.
“However, we are always open to having a dialogue with our friends but we don’t respond to pressure.
“When we do anything, we do it in our own interests.”
The move into sport began when Saudi Arabia drew up its ‘Vision 2030’, a roadmap to structurally changing its society, with a population of 36 million and more than 60 per cent under the age of 30.
The PIF is investing in programs it believes will help it achieve its 2030 goals by moving away from a reliance on oil.
The business and entertainment aspects of sport are one of the key initiatives the PIF is using alongside others such as aerospace and defence, telcos and media, and real estate
Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at the Skema Business School, Simon Chadwick, has been monitoring the reaction in Paris and London.
He told The Ticket that sharing the international stage with a region on the rise, emerging from a very different cultural and political background, is challenging for those used to calling the shots.
“In essence the view in those two places is the same as it is probably across most of Australia,” he said.
“That somehow this is an insidious threat, perpetrated by people who have ulterior motives, with suspect human rights records, and they are somehow trying to hoodwink the rest of the world into thinking that they’re good guys.”
Chadwick says while there is no doubt being a legitimate member of global sport brings reputational and image benefits, the west takes for granted how it has benefited from such power and now others want to share in the same opportunities.
“They do realise it is powerful and so therefore what they are in the process of doing is to acquire … the legitimacy that we have and to acquire the position at the global top table of sport.”
Steven Simon is a former National Security Council director for the Middle East and North Africa. He also spent 15 years with the US Department of State before taking up his current roles as a fellow at the MIT Centre for International Studies and a non-resident senior research analyst with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
He is also author of Grand Delusion — the Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East.
“I think US relations with many of the countries in the Middle East are somewhat strained right now for many reasons,” he told The Ticket.
“One is there are perceptions in the region that the US is withdrawing.
“So that’s intensified a search that was already underway on the part of some of these countries to diversify their foreign policy portfolios and look for other partners to supplement their relationship with the United States.
“Sports have been an important factor in Gulf state policies, not just in Saudi Arabia.
“The United Arab Emirates had the Formula One project that was their sport of choice, Qatar had football – the World Cup, now the Saudis have focused pretty much on golf.”
Aside from it being an arm of foreign policy, Simon believes there is an element of trying to appear to be “less alien to western sensibilities” by building familiarity.
“You pick a sport like this, and you market it, you really promote it, then you look like you’re less different.
“Secondly, it does bring money into these places … so there is a strategic dimension to this.”
Sport has long been used in US foreign policy. It still is. It is why the US reached out to Saudi Arabia to find a solution to the split in men’s golf.
Having played a significant role in the development of the Saudi economy, and providing military protection, it is challenging for the US to see Saudis building relationships elsewhere – such as with China and Iran.
“The United States is experiencing a bit of empty nest syndrome, the kids have flown the coop … and now the Saudis … have graduated, they are off in the world and from the US perspective they might be hanging around with the wrong crowd,” Simon said.
We live in an era where the business of sport has never been more lucrative, nor more politically challenging.
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