BANG SAUD OF ORDER
Rebels are branded traitors
PHIL MICKELSON and other American stars signed up for LIV Golf have been branded traitors by a 9/11 survivors group for taking part in the “multi-billion dollar sportswashing” of Saudi Arabia.
Terry Strada, the National Chair 9/11 Families United who lost her husband in the terrorist attack, said: “You have sold us out. This is a betrayal not only of us, but of all your countrymen.”
Greg Norman last night declared the first LIV event at the Centurion Club in Hertfordshire as a success after Charl Schwartzel claimed the $4m first prize and a further $750,000 as his Stingers won the team competition. It was the 2011 Masters champion’s first victory since 2016.
And former Masters champion Patrick Reed and world No.168 Pat Perez were yesterday confirmed as the latest signings for the breakaway league.
But the climax to the $25m Saudi-backed event was overshadowed by a stinging letter from 9/11 Families United to Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Reed and Kevin Na.
Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz yesterday called for the players to be banned from Majors following the murder of the Washington Post journalist in 2018.
But the public rebuke from a coalition of families and survivors of the worst-ever terrorist attacks on American soil brings fresh focus on LIV before this week’s US Open in Brookline.
The Al-Qaeda attack on New York in 2001, masterminded by Saudi Osama bin Laden, killed over 3,000 people and traumatised
the USA.
Strada wrote: “Our community wishes to express our outrage at your partnership with LIV Golf and remind you of the responsibility that your new business partner, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, shoulders for providing the financial support and logistical support that enabled the terrorists to attack our nation and kill our loved ones.
“Given Saudi Arabia’s role in the death of our loved ones and those injured on 9/11 – your fellow Americans – we are angered that you are so willing to help the Saudis cover up this history in their request for “respectability.”
“When you partner with the Saudis, you become complicit with their whitewash, and help give them the reputational cover they so desperately crave – and are willing to pay handsomely to manufacture. Whether it was the appeal of millions of dollars of hard cash, or just the opportunity to prosecute your professional grievances with the PGA, you have sold us out. This is a betrayal not only of us, but of all your countrymen.”
The 9/11 Families United website said the letter expressed their “outrage towards the golfers for selling out their fellow Americans by participating in the multibillion dollar sports washing campaign”.
S a m Horsfield shot a closing 68 to finish as top Brit in fifth place.