Pandering to the liberal media, the Professional Golfers’ Association last year canceled its big annual tournament that it had scheduled at a Trump golf course. This began the PGA-led boycott of Trump’s top-ranked golf courses, to the delight of Trump-haters.
Golf courses are how Donald Trump earns a living. By boycotting his golf courses, the Left cuts off Trump’s income and his financial means of funding his legal defense and political work.
But now Trump overcomes their boycott. Next week his same PGA-rejected golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, will host an LIV tournament, and many of the top players have switched from the anti-Trump PGA to the pro-Trump LIV side.
Greg Norman, a supporter of Trump, is the CEO of LIV (pronounced as in “live free”). He will also hold another tournament this year at Trump’s golf course in Miami, where tickets have already sold out.
Norman has assembled a group of Trump-friendly golfers who want to Make Golf Great Again. The anti-Trump media are treating the golfers with questions as hostile as those they ask Trump.
Hanging in the balance is whether the vicious liberal boycott of Trump’s properties – akin to a military blockade – will hold against Greg Norman’s valiant effort to breach it. The golfing world has suddenly become a proxy war over Trump’s political future.
The liberal media ambush golfers who have switched to LIV with odd questions about playing on Trump’s golf courses, which was never controversial before. “Lefty” Phil Mickelson, one of the greatest ever and the biggest name to join LIV, was impertinently asked last month, “How do you feel about playing on Trump courses?”
Implicit in that question is that someone should have qualms about playing on a golf course owned by Trump. Mickelson responded, “I care more about the quality of the test of golf, the quality of the golf course, the fan experience and their ability to see and view the golf, and the challenge of what the venue provides for the players.”
Liberals do not quit, and when reporters came after Mickelson with hostility again last week at the British Open, he became blunter in his response. “Let it go, dude. … I couldn’t be happier.”
Sergio Garcia, the Spanish golfer having many fans worldwide, played at a Trump charity golfing event nearly a decade ago after other celebrities began shunning Trump. Garcia switched to LIV, and on Monday he announced that he was leaving the hostile European circuit altogether.
The Scotland Open banned players who switched to the LIV-Trump side, but then a court issued an injunction allowing them to play. The prestigious Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia, has not yet banned any of the LIV players from its event next spring.
An outspoken critic of LIV, Rory McIlroy, was leading the British Open this past weekend to the delight of anti-Trumpers. Now called the Open Championship, this major tourney was played at the historic St. Andrews course in Scotland, where the game was invented 250 years ago.
But with a record-setting flourish of birdies on the final 9 holes, a 28-year-old Aussie named Cameron Smith won a stunning upset on Sunday. The liberal media were shocked when Smith implied that he, too, might be interested in joining LIV, and thereby playing in its Trump-course tournaments.
Trump-haters were also apoplectic when the black NBA great Charles Barkley, an outspoken supporter of Democrats, emphatically responded to a question about his interest in becoming a television commentator for LIV. “So, to answer your question, yes, I’m gonna 100 percent meet with LIV.”
Liberals made the United States dependent on Saudi oil, yet suddenly opponents of Trump have a problem with golfers being paid by it. Because LIV is funded by Saudi Arabian investments, liberals pretend that Trump is turning his back on victims of Saudi Arabia, including a murdered journalist and those who died in 9/11.
But if critics of Trump consistently object to Saudi Arabia, then they should have complained louder against the pilgrimages by Obama and Biden to the Saudi king, and protest buying Saudi oil. The public wants tournaments at Trump golf courses, and Trump spoke more against Saudi misconduct than any other president.
Greg Norman is doing for professional golf what needs to be done to the NFL and other professional sports whose executives are more liberal than their fans. Norman, who succeeded as a golfer with 331 weeks as the world’s #1 player, is taking the game back from the liberal tyrants and restoring it to the fans and players.
Players should be able to compete in an LIV tournament at a Trump golf course without fear of retaliation by the liberal-controlled PGA, who Trump observed on Monday is the real “disloyal” group. Last one out of the anti-Trump PGA should turn out its lights.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
