Graeme McDowell with outrageous (?!) LIV Golf-PGA Tour claim: "I'm speculating"
Graeme McDowell says he regrets attempting to answer questions about Saudi Arabia in the first LIV Golf press conference but conceded he was prepped.
Graeme McDowell says he regrets the comments he made at the first LIV Golf press conference more than a year ago.
But the golfer then made what could be argued as a bizarre claim about the PGA Tour.
McDowell recently joined The Thing About Golf podcast to discuss the explosive events that have occurred in men's professional golf since June 2022.
The 2010 Ryder Cup Europe hero told the host John Huggan his skin has thickened since joining the rival league and he didn't handle life on his new tour over the first three or four months very well.
"It bothered me that a reputation that I had spent 20 years building had actually just burned overnight," McDowell told Huggan.
"I'm like, is it really that fickle? Yes it is, is the answer. Public opinion will absolutely turn on you in a second."
McDowell then made his interesting remark, speculating that anti-Saudi narrative was possibly 'strategic' and 'paid for' by the PGA Tour.
The 2010 U.S. Open champion then conceded he was prepped to give answers from LIV Golf.
McDowell was involved in one of the most awkward press conferences in recent memory at the inaugural LIV event at Centurion Club last June.
We're not politicians, we're just golfers McDowell offered when he was pressed about Saudi Arabia's poor record on human rights.
Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter were also involved in what turned out to be a viral moment when they were asked if they would be willing to play golf in Vladimir Putin's Russia.
McDowell said he regrets attempting to answer questions that couldn't be answered.
He told the pod: "I was not a paid ambassador for Saudi Arabia human rights. I was a paid ambassador for a golf tour.
"You start answering questions that can't be answered. I regret those answers, not that they were necessarily wrong; that was what we had been prepped to say by this golf tour that's paying me.
"I'm not being paid by the Saudi Arabian human rights organization, I'm being paid by this new start-up golf tour, which is a financially lucrative opportunity for me at this stage in my career. The end.
"Of course, it was about the money. It didn't need said. Of course, that's what I was there for, it was a business decision."
Read more:
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- Report: LIV Golf officials to skip latest PGA Tour-PIF senate hearing
- Sir Nick Faldo burns LIV Golf's Greg Norman with brutal post
- Tour coach on Koepka's brutal comments about young golfer: "It did him good"
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