COO OF LIV GOLF EXITS SAUDI LEAGUE
Atul Khosla, a veteran sports executive who was expected to guide LIV Golf into the franchise model on which it has staked its viability, has resigned from the venture that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund financed in a challenge to the PGA Tour.
Khosla’s exit, just more than a year after LIV announced his appointment as its chief operating officer, comes as the startup struggles to gain sustained traction and, confidential records reported by The New York Times this week suggest, is far from reaching the benchmarks that would make it successful.
“At the conclusion of LIV’s successful inaugural season, Atul Khosla decided to move on,” Greg Norman, LIV’s commissioner, said in a statement Friday, days after players and agents were privately told that Khosla would step down. “We respect A.K. and his personal decision.”
Khosla is not the first senior official to leave LIV this year, and the outfit has faced questions over the future of Norman, a two-time winner of the British Open and a vociferous critic of the PGA Tour’s design.
But while a departure by Norman would threaten to deprive LIV of one of men’s golf’s most familiar and time-tested voices, Khosla was increasingly seen as the LIV executive most integral to fashioning a way forward.
At the same time, suspicions about the true scope of his power swirled in the weeks before he left LIV.
In a recent court filing, the PGA Tour accused the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as the wealth fund is formally known, of having an outsize role in managing an operation that has attracted a handful of the world’s top players, including Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Cameron
Smith.
But even with the defections of those players and some others from the PGA Tour, LIV has not secured the television and sponsorship arrangements that are the lifeblood of top-tier professional sports. Such deals were seen by McKinsey & Co. consultants, in an analysis privately prepared for Saudi officials last year, as vital to the new league’s prospects for success.
More golf
Antoine Rozner and Alfredo Garcia-Heredia moved into a tie for the lead with Sami Valimaki at the Mauritius Open on the DP World Tour. Rozner shot an 8-under 64 to join GarciaHeredia and Valimaki in a one-stroke lead after two rounds at Mont Choisy Le Golf on the Indian Ocean island. They are at 10-under 134 overall.
Deaths
Former forward and longtime college basketball coach Louis Orr died at 64. Orr’s family in a statement sent by Georgetown said he died Thursday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Orr starred at Syracuse from 1976-80 and had his No. 55 retired in 2015. He was a second-round
pick by Indiana and played two seasons with the Pacers before spending six seasons playing for the Knicks. Orr later coached at Siena, Seton Hall and Bowling Green. He was an assistant on coach Patrick Ewing’s staff at Georgetown for five seasons before transitioning to special assistant in the spring.
• Sinisa Mihajlovic ,a winner of the European Cup and Serie A who became a popular coach in Italy, died after a long battle with leukemia. He was 53.
Locally
Nine seconds into Friday night’s AHL game, the San Diego Gulls scored on a goal by Justin Kirkland, his fifth of the season, to take a lead over Coachella Valley at Pechanga Arena. However, they had to play the remainder of the 59:51 of the game and the Gulls gave up eight straight goals in an 8-1 defeat, their 10 consecutive loss and 12th in 13th games. The Gulls’ top two goalies are up with the NHL Anaheim Ducks. The Gulls will try to break the streak tonight when they host Tucson at 7 p.m.
Sports and courts
Former Nebraska interim football coach Mickey Joseph is no longer part of the Cornhuskers’ program. He was charged with felony assault on Dec. 1. The athletic department announced his departure in a statement and said it would have no additional comment.
• Recently fired Arizona Cardinals assistant coach Sean Kugler hired a law firm to investigate allegations that he inappropriately touched a female security guard when the team was in Mexico for a game against the 49ers. Kugler hired the law firm of Shields Pettini, which said on Friday that it has filed a request for arbitration with the NFL in response to the Cardinals’ handling of the situation, which resulted in Kugler’s firing. The law firm claims Kugler was fired for “unsubstantiated allegations.”
Winter sports
Tina Hermann of Germany had the fastest time in both heats to win a women’s skeleton race, while Kelly Curtis of the U.S. won a World Cup medal for the first time. Hermann led a 1-2 finish for Germany, which also had Susanne Kreher
take the silver. Curtis was eighth after the first heat, but soared up the standings by posting the second-best time in the second heat.
• The Italian ski team says two-time Olympic medalist Sofia Goggia
broke two fingers in her left hand when she hit a gate en route to a second-place finish in a World Cup downhill. The often-injured Goggia broke her index and middle fingers during the race in St. Moritz and was transported to Milan for immediate surgery with the aim of getting her back to the Swiss resort by evening to race in another downhill scheduled for the Corviglia course today. Goggia’s teammate Elena Curtoni won Friday’s race.