24 June 5, 2022The Sunday Times
Sport
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David
Walsh
Even though I applaud
sportspeople who take
principled stances, I
can’t bring myself to
condemn Johnson,
Westwood and
García for taking
the Saudi cash
‘They are
self-employed pro
golfers, they looked
at what was on offer
and decided it
worked for them’S
o, how do you feel about
Dustin Johnson now? Is he
lower in your estimation?
Or Lee Westwood? “I used
to like Westwood, but not
any more,” a golf buddy said
the other day. Like Johnson,
Westwood has taken the
Saudi money and he too will tee up in
the first of the LIV Golf tournaments
at the Centurion Club near St Albans
this week. Does all the great golf that
Westwood has played for more than
two decades now get reduced or even
binned?
Are Johnson’s victories at the 2016
US Open and the 2020 Masters to be
struck off because, in some people’s
eyes, he’s traded his reputation for
$150 million (£120 million)?
What should we say about Ian
Poulter, Sergio García and Graeme
McDowell, because they too will be at
Centurion Club? At different times
they were our favourite players at the
Ryder Cup. Have those memories
now been tarnished? Is it OK for
Martin Kaymer to hitch his wagon to
the Saudis because the way he’s been
playing for a few years now, it’s
costing him to tee it up.
We’ll get to the answers but, first, a
story about the world’s most admired
sporting icon, Muhammad Ali. In
1966 Ali publicly stated that he would
not be drafted into the US Army to
fight in Vietnam. A US court said he
should go to prison. Ali appealed,
arguing that it would be against his
Muslim faith to fight in a war.
At 27, he was stripped of his world
heavyweight title and banned from
competing. Seen as a draft dodger, hewas hated by many white Americans.
I recall the disappointment of his
three-year absence from the ring and,
as a fan, I wondered why he wouldn’t
just play along with the authorities.
Had he been drafted, Ali could have
continued his career while doing little
things to help rally the troops.
All those years ago, in the land of
teenage fandom, I didn’t imagine that
Ali was acting out of principle but that
his head had been turned by his
friends in the Nation of Islam
movement. Well, that was a mistaken
view. A few years ago I read Jonathan
Eig’s fine biography Ali, A Life, and it
became clear just how committed Ali
was to his position on Vietnam.
“Why should they ask me, another
so-called Negro, to put on a uniform
and go 10,000 miles from home and
drop bombs and bullets on brown
people in Vietnam while so-called
Negro people in Louisville are treated
like dogs and denied simple human
rights?” he asked. Ali went on to say
that his real enemies were in the
United States and he wouldn’t help
the US to enslave others.
At the time 10 per cent of the US
population was black but 22 per cent
of those who died in Vietnam came
from that community. History would
be kind to the stance taken by Ali, just
as it has been brutal to the US political
and military leaders who thought the
war in Vietnam was a good idea.
Through the three years before an
appeal court found in his favour, Ali
struggled financially. Not being able
to fight cost him millions at a time
when he was far from wealthy. Yet he
never regretted his decision and youcan easily believe that his iconic
status has as much to do with who he
was as a person as it has to do with his
ability in the ring.
Nowadays it is common for
athletes to express opinions on things
that transcend sport and that’s good.
Andy Murray and Coco Gauff, the
tennis players, spoke passionately in
the aftermath of the slaughter at the
Robb Elementary School in Uvalde,
Texas. “I heard something on the
radio and it was a child from thatDouglas High School in Parkland,
Florida. She knew people at that
school who survived the massacre
but had to live with having
experienced it. Murray, Gauff and
those who put their heads above the
parapet have my admiration.
So where are we with Johnson,
Westwood et al, who have no qualms
about doing business with a
tournament backed by Saudi Arabia?
What they’ve done isn’t admirable
but neither should they be vilified.
They are self-employed professional
golfers, they looked at what was on
offer and decided it worked for them.
As Eddie Howe did when agreeing to
become manager of the Saudi-owned
Newcastle United.
If I feel no inclination to criticise
Howe (and I don’t), how can I then
disapprove of the golfers? We live in a
country that sells arms to Saudi
Arabia, have a government that
maintains good diplomatic relations
with that country and still there are
some who believe that our sports
people should be the conscience of
the nation. That makes no sense.
I get why Westwood, Poulter,
García, McDowell and Kaymer said
yes. All but Kaymer are in their forties
and can no longer compete at the
level of the next generation, led by
Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler, Cameron
Smith, Collin Morikawa, Justin
Thomas, Patrick Cantlay and Viktor
Hovland.
The decision of the defectors to
play on the LIV Golf tour was, among
other things, an admission of their
diminishing powers. I get it and I
won’t criticise it.Forget England
job — O’Gara
could sort out
the Northern
Ireland protocol
Ronan O’Gara, the former Ireland
fly half who now coaches La
Rochelle, is a pretty annoying
character. In his first season as head
coach at the French club, O’Gara
led the team to a last-minute victory
over favourites Leinster at the Stade
Vélodrome in Marseille. Somehow
the underdogs managed to
suffocate Leinster while
playing their own game. It was
impressive.
Though the winning try came in
the last play of the game, La
Rochelle’s victory was well
deserved and O’Gara’s fingerprints
were all over the performance, not
least in the way he kept fly half
Ihaia West out of the way every time
Leinster attacked. That way the fly
half was able to concentrate on his
primary role, which, of course, was
to lead the team’s attack. The Times
and The Telegraph suggested O’Gara
should be the replacement for
England’s Eddie Jones as head
coach after next year’s World Cup.
In the midst of La Rochelle’s
victory parade through the city,
O’Gara found the time to deliver a
3000-word column for Thursday’s
Irish Examiner newspaper, which
took readers inside the La Rochelle
camp before, during and after their
greatest triumph. It was a terrific
piece, packed with insight.
Allow me to give you a sense of
what was in the column. About the
last-minute try: “These are the
small moments that can change
your life, that do change your life.
And this is a point worth making
about such tiny margins. It’s come
into my head a lot this week that it
could have been a third losing final
in a row. I know I am not as good a
coach as some are saying, just as I
would not be as poor as others
would have said had Leinster
survived and we’d lost by a few
points.”
The 45-year-old former Munster
No 10 also described his post-match
encounter with second row Thomas
Lavault, whose indisciplined trip
late in the game might have cost his
team victory: “If there’s a player in
this group who cares more about
Stade Rochelais than Thomas
Lavault, I have yet to meet him,”
O’Gara wrote.
“After it was all done, he shook
his head. ‘Oh Rog. Oh Rog. Just
imagine...’ An hour into a pulsating
final, we were 18-17 behind to
Leinster and Thomas flicks out a leg
on a Leinster box-kick. Yellow all
day. In these moments, it’s about
knowing your player. He has that
capacity to lose the moment for ten
seconds, and then he returns to
being the most adorable young fella
you would ever meet.”
Never mind the England job, how
about asking O’Gara to sort out the
Northern Ireland protocol?What
Johnson has
done isn’t
admirable
but he
shouldn’t be
vilifiedDARREN CARROLLschool,” Murray said in a BBC
interview. “I experienced a similar
thing when I was at Dunblane [the
mass shooting in 1996], a teacher
coming out and waving all of the
children under tables and telling
them to go and hide. And it was a kid
telling exactly the same story about
how she survived it.”
At Roland Garros on Thursday,
Gauff was asked about the message
she wrote on the television camera:
“Peace End Gun Violence”. Her
answer was straightforward: “For
me, it’s kind of close to home.”
Gauff was 13 when 17 students
were murdered at Marjory Stoneman*