Tiger Woods Denies Knowledge of Leaked Anti-LIV Golf Talking Points amid Lawsuit | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors
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Tiger Woods denied having any awareness of scripted anti-LIV Golf comments that were allegedly prepared for him by the PGA Tour in June 2022 and leaked this weekend from an ongoing antitrust lawsuit, according to Reuters (h/t ESPN).
Woods was reportedly going to be prompted to say that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan “the right guy for this war” during the Travelers Championship in June 2022 and to tell his fellow golfers to “Do what I did: tell the Saudis to go [expletive] themselves. And mean it.”
Woods denied ever seeing such a document or having knowledge of those talking points:
Per the leaked documents from the antitrust lawsuit, there were allegedly two pages of prepared talking points for Woods.
“We have to actively participate in defending the PGA Tour,” Woods was allegedly supposed to tell his fellow golfers who didn’t defect to LIV Golf. “It’s time to join the fight.”
In Aug. 2022, former LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman said on Fox News that Woods turned down something in the ballpark of $700-$800 million from the Saudi-backed operation.
“That number was out there before I became CEO,” he said (h/t Kyle Porter of CBS Sports). “So, that number has been out there, yes. And look, Tiger is a needle-mover, right? So, of course you are going to look at the best of the best. So, they had originally approached Tiger before I became CEO. So, yes, that [offer was] somewhere in that neighborhood.”
The PGA Tour and LIV Golf agreed to an alliance in June, stunning the sporting world after an intense competition between the two sides over keeping or acquiring the game’s top players.
That has earned the attention of U.S. lawmakers, with a particular focus on the fact that LIV Golf is backed by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund and accused of being a sportswashing effort meant to help distract from the country’s history of human-rights violations. Additionally, lawmakers are concerned over the potential of a foreign country eventually assuming operating control over the North American-based PGA Tour and golf in general.
On Monday, ESPN reported that the PGA Tour’s chief operating officer Ron Price and board member Jimmy Dunne will testify next week in front of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations regarding the PGA-LIV alliance.
Norman and Saudi Public Investment Fund governor Yasir al-Rumayyan declined to testify, however, citing scheduling conflicts.
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