Pádraig Harrington says ‘sportswashing does work’ as controversy over PGA Tour and Liv merger rumbles on

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Pádraig Harrington defends Irish quartet’s response amid ongoing LIV ‘ructions’

In a wide-ranging interview with Duffy on the phone-in radio programme that ranged from his dog Wilson to the influences of his mother Breda and his late father Paddy, Harrington also referenced his social media post on Twitter following the PGA Tour merger in which he noted Ireland’s own past social injustices, most pertinently regard to the mother and baby homes.

A few days now since “the merger”. It doesn’t look like a merger or even a hostile takeover as I had once thought. It looks like a deal to stop the lawsuits. The 3 tours seem to keep their status quo at least for the players with no crossover for now.“The country I come from had for a long time accepted … a young person could be raped in her own home by a family member and she would be imprisoned, effectively institutionalised and the rapist would get away with it.

The point he made was that social change in Saudi Arabia will take time and, with a nod to how sports washing was not just in golf but also in football and Formula One, said: “Sportswashing does work. [Saudi Arabia’s] goal is to be the hub of the Middle East, they are trying to overtake Dubai and Abu Dhabi and be the centre of business and tourism in the Middle East.

“If I had a magic wand and I could go in and say, ‘hey, look, we want you to adhere to the norms of human rights, that we call consider to be completely normal’, I’d wave that wand. But forcing them to do it would make them backtrack, they have to do it on their own terms. We’d all love it to happen today but if somebody said in 25 years, like we look back on the mother and baby homes, if somebody said in 25 years, ‘look at Saudi Arabia, look what it was like and look at it now’.

 

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PGA Tour 'could have been in financial turmoil' without LIV merger - Padriag HarringtonPadraig Harrington has said the merger between the PGA Tour and LIV golf is a “huge u-turn” and he believes concerns over the cost of litigation between the parties hastened the deal.
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