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    PGA Tour Meets With Saudi Fund in New York to Discuss LIV Golf Deal

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    More than a year has passed since the tour agreed to a deal with LIV Golf, but there is some hope an in-person gathering in New York could create momentum.More than a year after the PGA Tour announced plans to combine forces with the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund’s upstart LIV Golf league, the two sides met in Manhattan on Tuesday in hopes of — finally — making headway on getting to a deal.Given a series of starts and stops in talks aimed at a proposed deal, an accord remains far from certain. But executives from the tour and the Saudi wealth fund, which backs LIV Golf, alongside their advisers, were focused on hammering out details of an agreement, three people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.Also involved in the talks is at least one executive from the consortium of U.S. investors that has already committed to investing in the tour, the people said. The meeting is expected to continue on Wednesday, and could also spill into additional days, they said.The flurry of activity demonstrated an eagerness by both sides to get a deal done. The standoff between the PGA Tour and its Saudi-backed rival has divided the sport, frustrating fans and players alike.No players attended the meeting, the people said, though several have been in other meetings about the deal. A report that Tiger Woods was New York spurred speculation about his presence, but one of the people said Woods was in town for a golf event supporting his foundation.Plans for the meeting came together within the past week, with the hope that an in-person gathering would generate some momentum, the people said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In England, a Changed Nation Hopes for a Change in Soccer Fortunes

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      After installing a Labour government for the first time in 14 years, the country is looking to a historical precedent as a presage to a long-awaited sporting success.Whether “football’s coming home” is as unpredictable as ever. But in England, watching this weekend as its men’s national soccer team comes within touching distance of glory, the dreaming and dreading seem less anguished this time around.Three years ago, in the deadly grip of the coronavirus pandemic and the acrid wake of Brexit, England suffered a heartbreaking loss to Italy, on penalty kicks, in the final of the European championships in London.England’s run through that Covid-delayed tournament had lifted a country that badly needed it. The team’s unofficial anthem, “Three Lions,” swelled in pubs and living rooms across the country, offering the hope, however far-fetched, that after five decades of tournament disappointments and 14 months of lockdowns, “football’s coming home,” as the lyrics of the song go.Home looks very different this year.As England prepares to play Spain in the final in Berlin on Sunday, there’s a sense of a country turning the page, on the field and off. Last week, the Labour Party swept out a Conservative Party that had been in government for 14 years, leaving a professed soccer fan, Keir Starmer, as prime minister, and raising a tantalizing historical precedent.England flags in London. As the country prepares to play Spain in the European final in Berlin on Sunday, there’s a sense of a nation turning the page, on the field and off.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockThe last time England won a major international championship, the World Cup in 1966, it came four months after the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, had scored a landslide victory over the Conservatives. The 58 years since then have been a sad litany of missed chances and unfulfilled promise — or as the song pitilessly puts it, “England’s gonna throw it away, gonna blow it way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Euro 2024, France Stars Pivot From Political Fight to a Soccer One

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      Some of the country’s top players had urged voters to reject the far right in a pivotal election. With that battle over, a date with Spain in Euro 2024 offers a more familiar challenge.For once, Didier Deschamps could reflect on a news conference that passed by almost without incident. Given the timing, that had seemed unlikely. On Sunday, French voters had issued a stinging rebuke to their country’s resurgent far right in a seismic legislative election. On Tuesday, the country’s increasingly activist soccer team will face Spain in a European Championship semifinal.Sandwiched between the two was an appearance by Deschamps, the coach of the French national team, in the full megawatt glare of the world’s news media. Although he has always been studiously inscrutable, his players have not. Over the past month, a half dozen members of his squad have made their feelings on the rise of the National Rally perfectly clear.The forward Marcus Thuram called on the French to “fight daily” against the threat of the far right. The defender Jules Koundé expressed his hope that the country would reject those who “seek to take away our freedom.” His teammate Ibrahima Konaté urged that power should not be handed to “certain people who are intent on division.”Deschamps, then, may well have been expecting awkward exchanges on Monday. Instead, he found himself fielding the sort of questions that must have come as blissful relief. How fit was Kylian Mbappé? What does he think of Spain’s midfield?Marcus Thuram, left, and Kylian Mbappé were among the France players who spoke out forcefully before the elections in France.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere was only one moment of tension. Deschamps had been asked by a Swedish journalist if it might be fair to characterize his France team as a little, well, boring: It has, after all, managed to reach the semifinals of the tournament without scoring a goal from open play.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Black-Clad Ultras Are a Fixture at Euro 2024

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      Hard-core fan groups, embracing a strong nationalistic streak, have provoked pushback from soccer’s authorities at the European Championship.The instructions were concise and clear.Those hoping to march to the stadium with Hungary’s fans for their soccer team’s first game of the European Championship were expected to report by 10 a.m. sharp, five hours before kickoff.A strict dress code would apply. Some could wear black. Others were to stick with red, white and green, the colors of the country’s flag. Under no circumstances was there to be any flashiness. “Gaudy colors, clown hats and bagpipes” were all prohibited. They were, prospective marchers were reminded, “going to a soccer stadium, not a circus.”The hectoring and slightly priggish tone felt jarring, considering the source of the orders: the official Facebook page of the Carpathian Brigade, a virulently nationalistic faction of hard-core fans — ultras, as such groups are known — that provides the Hungarian national team with its vociferous and volatile backing.The Carpathian Brigade has, in recent years, become perhaps Europe’s most infamous ultra group, its reputation forged by clashing with the police, showering opponents with racist abuse and displaying homophobic banners. In 2021, during the last European Championship, it had to remind members to cover up any Nazi-related tattoos so as not to contravene German law.None of that has stopped its growth. If anything, it has accelerated it. Drawn by the Carpathian Brigade’s voluble Hungarian patriotism and unabashed right-wing values — an ideology that both echoes and trumpets the populist rhetoric of Viktor Orban, the country’s prime minister — the group may now be able to call on as many as 15,000 members.It is also not alone. Black-clad ultras have been a fixture at Euro 2024 this month, with detachments — sometimes numbering a few hundred, sometimes a little larger — visible across Germany and at games involving Albania, Croatia, Romania and Slovakia, among others.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      PGA Tour Raises $1.5 Billion From Group of U.S. Investors

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      The move, which involves the Fenway Sports Group, raises questions about whether a deal to combine forces with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund is still necessary.The PGA Tour announced on Wednesday that it had reached a deal to raise at least $1.5 billion from a group of U.S. investors, a move that raises new questions about whether a proposed alliance with a rival tour backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund will come to fruition.The influx of money into the PGA Tour, which could end up being as much as $3 billion, is led by the Fenway Sports Group, the parent company of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool Football Club. The tour is simultaneously negotiating a partnership with its well-funded competitor, LIV Golf.That deal, which was announced in June, was effectively an acknowledgment by the PGA Tour that it did not have enough money to compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars the Saudi fund was prepared to put in the sport. A number of prominent players had already left the PGA Tour for the LIV tour.The PGA Tour and the Saudi fund initially set a Dec. 31 deadline to work out details and conclude their alliance. That deadline has since been extended, and the partnership between the two tours has not yet been completed. The question now is whether the deal with U.S. investors changes the PGA Tour’s calculus.The tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, said Wednesday on a call with PGA Tour players before the official announcement that the tour “does remain in active and frequent dialogue” with representatives for the Saudi wealth fund. He added that the U.S. investors were “aware and supportive” of its negotiations with the fund, and that he was in Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago to conduct due diligence on the proposed alliance with executives supporting the U.S. investor group.The Saudi fund has made clear that it will continue to compete with the PGA Tour through LIV Golf if there is no alliance. In December, the Saudi-backed tour poached Jon Rahm, the world’s third-ranked player.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Luis Díaz’s Kidnapped Father Is Freed in Colombia

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      Luis Manuel Díaz was abducted 12 days ago by a guerrilla group called the National Liberation Army.The father of Luis Díaz, a Colombian soccer star for the English club Liverpool, was freed on Thursday after he was kidnapped by a guerrilla group, Colombian officials said.“We report with joy the release of Don Luis Manuel Díaz,” the Colombian government’s commission for peace talks said in a statement on Thursday morning. “We hope that he will soon regain his tranquillity, disturbed by an act that should never have happened.”It was not immediately clear what was exchanged, if anything, for the elder Mr. Díaz’s freedom.Both of Mr. Díaz’s parents were kidnapped on Oct. 28 by armed men from a gas station in their hometown, Barrancas, Colombia. His mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was rescued hours later, but her husband, Luis Manuel Díaz, remained captive.The Colombian national police and the military mobilized to find Mr. Díaz amid fears that the kidnappers might have taken him from Barrancas, which is in La Guajira, a region of northern Colombian, across the border to Venezuela.Five days later, the National Liberation Army, a guerrilla group, took responsibility for the kidnapping. The outfit, known as the E.L.N., is the largest remaining rebel group in Colombia’s 60-year internal conflict and operates in the countryside.In an announcement published by local news outlets, José Manuel Martínez Quiroz, who was identified as the commander of the northern front of the E.L.N., said the group had commands with “economic missions and one of them” took the elder Mr. Díaz, who is known as Mane. But it said he would be freed because he was the family member of “a great athlete whom all Colombians love.”Although kidnappings for ransom and extortion in Colombia have resurged in recent years after a lull, E.L.N.’s initial statement did not make any demands in exchange for the release of Mr. Díaz.Three days later, the E.L.N. blamed the Colombian military for the delay. In a statement, the group said on Sunday that it was trying to avoid incidents with the Colombian authorities but that the area remained militarized with flyovers and arriving troops. The situation, it said, “does not allow the execution of the liberation plan quickly and safely.” The following day, the military announced that it was withdrawing from the region where Mr. Díaz, who local news reports say is 56, was believed to be held. But when he had still not been freed by Tuesday, Otty Patiño, Colombia’s chief negotiator in peace talks with the E.L.N., told reporters that there was “no excuse” for the delay. He said the guerrilla group had been in contact with the United Nations and Roman Catholic Church.The kidnapping captured the attention of a country of nearly 52 million not just because soccer is the most popular sport there, but also because it stoked concerns about increasing insecurity and whether the government was doing enough to stop it. In public pleas and in marches in Mr. Díaz’s hometown, Colombians called for his father’s release.The Colombian government, under President Gustavo Petro, had been negotiating a peace treaty with the E.L.N., and a six-month cease-fire was to begin in August. But after the elder Mr. Díaz was kidnapped, Mr. Petro said that the E.L.N. had committed an act that “goes against the very peace process.”The E.L.N.’s top commander, Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, known by his nom de guerre, Antonio García, said in a statement, according to local reports, that the elder Mr. Díaz’s kidnapping had been “an error” and called his son, 26, a symbol for Colombia.The younger Mr. Díaz, who is known as Lucho, has shone for his country’s national team. He rose from playing for his local Indigenous team to larger clubs in Colombia, eventually landing at Liverpool with a contract worth more than a reported $60 million. Mr. Díaz’s father was a gifted amateur player in Barrancas and trained his son. The Liverpool player sat out the first game after his father’s kidnapping but returned to action on Sunday. After scoring a late game-tying goal in a 1-1 draw against Luton, he pulled up his jersey to reveal an undershirt that read, “Freedom for Papa” in Spanish.After the game, he pleaded for his father’s release.“Every second, every minute, our distress grows,” he wrote in a statement. “My mother, my brothers and I are desperate, anguished and without words to describe what we’re feeling. This suffering will only end when we have him back home.” More

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      The N.B.A. and Its Owners Fight for Change. But Not Necessarily the Same Change.

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      The league embraces progressive causes supported by players. But some team owners pull in the opposite direction, as apparent in the Orlando Magic’s donation to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.In June 2022, on the same day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, released a statement jointly with the W.N.B.A.’s commissioner, Cathy Engelbert.Silver and Engelbert said the leagues believed “that women should be able to make their own decisions concerning their health and future, and we believe that freedom should be protected.”Less than one year later, one of the N.B.A.’s teams, the Orlando Magic — as an organization — wrote a $50,000 check to Never Back Down, a super PAC promoting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, financial disclosures revealed this week. The Magic are owned by the DeVos family, well-known conservatives. Betsy DeVos, the daughter-in-law of the former Magic chairman Richard DeVos, who died in 2018, was former president Donald J. Trump’s education secretary.The check was written on May 19, according to a team spokesman. That was weeks after DeSantis signed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, prohibiting the termination of pregnancies after six weeks, but days before he had officially declared he would run for the Republican presidential nomination.The donation “was given as a Florida business in support of a Florida governor for the continued prosperity of Central Florida,” the team said in a statement.The Magic’s donation to DeSantis, who is in his second term as governor, was not the first time an N.B.A. team had put its name on a political donation. In the 1990s, the Phoenix Suns, then owned by Jerry Colangelo, donated tens of thousands to the Republican National Committee. But the Magic’s check appears to be the first direct donation from an N.B.A. team to a group directly allied with a presidential candidate — or one, like DeSantis, who was widely expected to run.The N.B.A., under its commissioner, Adam Silver, has supported causes supported by players.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThe donation was also a reminder that for all of the N.B.A.’s professions of support for progressive causes that its players believe in, several billionaire team owners — whose interests Silver represents — have deployed their own power to fight those very causes. (The N.B.A. declined to comment.)Owners like Dan Gilbert (Cleveland Cavaliers), Tilman Fertitta (Houston Rockets) James Dolan (Knicks) and the DeVos family have donated large sums to Republican politicians who oppose abortion rights, gun control, voting rights and police reform — all issues the N.B.A. has supported, either in public statements or through its Social Justice coalition.“Any time I have noticed in my research where the N.B.A. has responded to player activism and player demands, they’ve always been forced to do so,” Theresa Runstedtler, a history professor at American University and the author of “Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the N.B.A.,” said in an interview.She continued: “It’s always been something that they’ve been pushed into by the more vocal and militant players in the league.”In the summer of 2020, several N.B.A. players protested the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by police in Minneapolis, and the Milwaukee Bucks refused to come out for a playoff game against the Orlando Magic after the shooting of another Black man, Jacob Blake, by police in Kenosha, Wis. In response, N.B.A. owners agreed to form the Social Justice Coalition, which would emphasize voting rights, police reform and criminal justice reform — all areas that disproportionately affected Black people.On paper, the N.B.A. was moving beyond traditional philanthropy. The Bucks’ walkout compelled the league to shape public policy, a goal far beyond what other professional sports leagues intended to do.“Our goal is really simple,” James Cadogan, the coalition’s executive director, said in a social media clip introducing the group. “We want to take moments of protest, moments of people power like we saw last year, and turn them into public policy. We want to change laws.”In recent years, the N.B.A. has taken up the cause of Clean Slate initiatives, an effort in states to seal some records of those who had been incarcerated. Weeks ago, DeSantis vetoed a Republican-backed bill in Florida concerning the expunging of criminal records.The Social Justice Coalition has endorsed several bills in its nascent existence, though with limited success: The EQUAL Act, a move to end sentencing disparities in cases involving the sale of crack and powder cocaine, is not yet federal law. The George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, a police reform bill that passed the House in 2021, languished in the Senate.Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors warmed up for a game in 2022. He made a video urging fans to support the Freedom to Vote Act.Jeff Chiu/Associated PressAfter the 2020 election, Republicans made a significant push to tighten election rules at the state level, after which the Golden State star Stephen Curry made a video for the coalition imploring fans to connect with lawmakers to pass the Freedom To Vote Act. Separately, the coalition supported a voting rights bill named after the former congressman John Lewis. Both bills were blocked by a Senate Republican filibuster. The N.B.A. has not called for the filibuster to be removed.The N.B.A. is hardly to blame when a hot-button bill fails to pass a divided Congress. But it is harder for the league to effect change when some of its team owners have made it their mission to elect people who oppose that change.At the end of 2015, with Silver still relatively new to the commissioner job, the league partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety on an advertising campaign about gun safety. Stars like Curry and Carmelo Anthony spoke in personal terms about the effects of gun violence in commercials that aired during Christmas Day games, when the N.B.A. traditionally has a big national audience. The commercials didn’t call for specific legislation, but partnering with a political figure like Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who founded Everytown, was an unusual move for an American sports league.The next year, the N.B.A. moved the All-Star game from North Carolina to protest a state law that critics said targeted lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Silver’s pulling the game had consequences for the local economy and embarrassed politicians that sports leagues typically want to mollify.The Republican governor of the state, Pat McCrory, blasted the N.B.A., saying that the league, and other critics, had “misrepresented our laws and maligned the people of North Carolina simply because most people believe boys and girls should be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers without the opposite sex present.”Silver would later tell an audience that the law was “inconsistent with the core values of the league.” (A frequent donor to liberal politicians, he is open about his own political beliefs.)Now, a franchise has written a large check to DeSantis, who has signed bills that critics say target L.G.B.T.Q. communities — which would go against what Silver would call the “core values of the league.” DeSantis has also been in a feud with Disney — which the N.B.A. does business with as a broadcast partner of ESPN. Disney is a sponsor of the Magic, though Disney did not respond to a request for comment on whether that partnership would continue. And the league is choosing to stay silent for now.What the N.B.A. should and should not campaign for isn’t an easy question. But since the league loudly stood up for transgender people in one instance and abortion rights in another, its silence is noteworthy when a franchise owner, using the team name, supports a politician with opposing views.The N.B.A. is, in the end, a business whose primary goal is to make money. If it is also genuinely interested standing up for some social issues, it will need to stand up to its owners too. More

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      Other Sports Faced Congress’s Glare. Now Golf Will Get Its Turn.

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      A Senate hearing on Tuesday is just one part of Washington’s scrutiny of the PGA Tour’s deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Sports executives and players have sometimes defended themselves or patiently absorbed hours of fury. They have occasionally apologized or pleaded for help. They have shifted blame or used celebrity and childhood memory as a charm offensive. In other instances, they have lied or obfuscated or simply said little at all.PGA Tour leaders, who are expected to appear before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday to discuss their circuit’s surprise alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, have a menu of time- and pressure-tested options for facing a sports-curious Congress. The tactics they turn to will likely do much to influence whether Tuesday’s proceeding is a blip that leads to a day’s worth of headlines or a debacle that triggers far greater scrutiny.“The PGA would be smart to understand that they’re not calling them in to play patty-cake,” said J.C. Watts, who played quarterback at Oklahoma before representing a district in the state in Congress and, from 1999 to 2003, serving as a member of the Republican leadership in the House.“The constituents back home, they understand sports and they understand 9/11,” Watts added, referring to longstanding accusations that Saudi government operatives played a role in the 2001 attacks. “This is sports with a much deeper twist than your typical hearing.”That Congress, which has a long history of quizzing, hectoring and looming when it comes to sports, would step into golf’s fray felt like a certainty after the tour and the Saudi wealth fund announced a framework agreement on June 6. So far, that activity has taken the form of two Senate inquiries, a House bill to revoke the tour’s tax-exempt status, demands for the Justice Department and the Treasury Department to consider intervening and Tuesday’s hearing at the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.The proceeding is the latest example of a congressional interest in sports that has led to a mixed record. Lawmakers and their investigators have unearthed information and sometimes provoked changes to the sports landscape, either through legislation or the grinding power of the congressional bully pulpit.“I think you’ve got to articulate your public policy purpose,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who was instrumental in hearings nearly two decades ago about steroid use in baseball, which lawmakers depicted as a part of a national scourge. “That’s really what you’ve got to do. It can be a health thing, a tax equity thing, but you’ve got to articulate why Congress is involved, and it’s a high threshold.”Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said the “central” role that sports play in American society makes them especially important for Congress to scrutinize.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesA sports hearing, Davis warned, was “high-risk, high-reward, particularly at a time when Congress is not seen as productive.”Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who is the subcommittee’s chairman, said sports’ “central” role in American society makes them especially important for Congress to scrutinize. The proposed Saudi role in golf, he signaled, was too much for Congress to ignore.“There really is a national interest in this cherished, iconic American institution, which is about to be taken over by one of the world’s most repressive governments,” he said in an interview.On Tuesday, the subcommittee will not hear from any of the three witnesses it originally sought. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, has been on medical leave for almost a month, though the tour said Friday that he would return next week. Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, and Greg Norman, the commissioner of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, cited scheduling conflicts and declined to appear.“Suffice it to say, this hearing will certainly not be the last,” Blumenthal said. “We will have hearings after there is a final agreement, if appropriate, and there is a national interest in doing it.”After the tour announced Monahan’s planned return, a spokeswoman for Blumenthal, Maria McElwain, said that the subcommittee would be “following up with him regarding any remaining questions after Tuesday’s hearing.”Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, will not appear before the Senate Committee to testify.Rob Carr/Getty ImagesBut the PGA Tour is hoping to avoid testifying after Tuesday, when Ron Price, its chief operating officer, will appear. Although Price did not negotiate the agreement announced last month, the tour board member who initiated the talks, James J. Dunne III, is also expected to testify.Price and Dunne may also be asked about the weekend resignation of Randall Stephenson from the tour’s board after more than a decade. In his resignation letter, Stephenson, the former chief executive of AT&T, cited “serious concerns with how this framework agreement came to fruition without board oversight.” He added that the deal was not one that he could “in good conscience support,” especially because American intelligence officials concluded that Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler authorized the 2018 murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.“If you are not really nervous and anxious to make sure you are prepared, then you are probably not prepared,” said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, who has repeatedly testified before Congress. “It will, for sure, be the worst night of sleep that any witness is going to have.”Golf has scarcely been a topic of inquiry in congressional hearing rooms. The sport’s leaders have often handled their business in Washington behind closed doors, relying on a fount of good will and gentility. The tour faced a significant threat in the 1990s, when the Federal Trade Commission examined antitrust issues in golf before its inquiry fizzled amid a pressure campaign from Capitol Hill.Public appearances on the Hill have been more cheery. Arnold Palmer, for instance, addressed a joint meeting of Congress to pay tribute to Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Jack Nicklaus spoke to a House committee about character education.Other titans of professional sports have had less pleasant interactions in Washington. Lawmakers have examined everything from college football’s Bowl Championship Series (“It looks like a rigged deal,” President Biden, who was then a senator, said.) to sexual abuse, domestic violence and the N.F.L.’s investigation into the Washington Commanders.But baseball has drawn much of the attention from Congress, like when senators called a 1958 hearing on antitrust exemptions. (“Stengelese Is Baffling to Senators,” read a subsequent headline in The New York Times, which reported that Yankees Manager Casey Stengel had lawmakers “confused but laughing.”)Neither Greg Norman, left, the commissioner of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, nor Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, will appear at the hearing Tuesday.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressThe more recent proceedings about steroids in baseball featured a series of electrifying hearings, including one in 2005 when sluggers employed all manner of strategies during hostile questioning, and a 2008 spectacle that factored into the indictment of the celebrated pitcher Roger Clemens on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of Congress. He was ultimately acquitted.For all of the commotion and skepticism, though, the cumulative pressure from Congress helped prod baseball into sweeping changes.The Senate subcommittee’s goals for golf are, for now, unclear.“What’s a win on this, outside of getting your mug on the news?” asked Davis, who, after leaving Congress, represented the former Commanders owner Daniel Snyder during a House inquiry. “Is it undoing this deal? Is it exposing some Saudi plot to come in and take over American golf?”The wealth fund has denied that it is using sports to try to repair the kingdom’s reputation as a human rights abuser and has instead asserted that it wants to diversify the Saudi economy and empower the country to play a greater global role. But the Saudi element could still help the Senate inquiry to develop staying power because it gives Congress something to explore beyond a seemingly mundane sports issue.“Usually when you’re taking about sports, you don’t have to talk about 9/11 families, you don’t have to talk about the Pentagon, you don’t have to talk about Flight 93,” Watts said. “In this case, the one opposition that rallies everybody is the Saudi money.”Blumenthal suggested in the interview that he expects Saudi Arabia’s history — in the interview, he accused the kingdom of being “actively complicit in terrorist activities, including 9/11” — to be a central theme of Tuesday’s proceeding and the unfolding inquiry.The panel cannot unilaterally block the deal from advancing, but members are well aware that a crush of revelations or damaging testimony could stir outrage and, perhaps more consequentially, nudge other parts of the federal government that could do more to stop the alliance.Tygart, the antidoping chief, recalled a meeting with a senator before a 2017 hearing, with the lawmaker making plain that he understood exactly how the event could shape public debate, even if it did not yield legislation.“I know,” Tygart remembered the senator telling him, “how much good can come out of witnesses sitting under the bright lights and squirming in their seats.” More

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      Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf Deal Is a Triumph That Transcends Sports

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      The deal to merge LIV Golf with the PGA Tour is a big win for the oil-rich kingdom, headlining a banner week that also includes a visit from the American secretary of state.There was no shortage of unpleasant things that the commissioner of the top U.S. golf circuit, the PGA Tour, said about Saudi Arabia when an upstart league backed by the oil-rich kingdom began recruiting his high-profile players.The commissioner, Jay Monahan, lamented a “foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf.” He sniped at players who left for the new league, called LIV Golf, hinting at the stain that the Saudi government’s human rights violations would leave on them.But on Tuesday, he sat down next to the head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — both smiling jovially — for a television interview to announce that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf were forming what promises to be a lucrative partnership.“I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” Mr. Monahan said later the same day. “But circumstances do change.”The deal, if it goes forward, represents an enormous victory for Saudi Arabia and its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the country’s bid to become a major player in global sports, giving the kingdom considerable sway over the game of golf. But the significance of the moment transcends sports as Saudi Arabia under Prince Mohammed seeks greater political influence in the Middle East and beyond.Over the past weeks, the country has seen a flurry of diplomatic activity, and some successes, including the opening of an embassy of its longtime regional rival, Iran, as the two countries move toward restoring normal relations.Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour, center, without a cap. “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” he said, referring to the deal with LIV. “But circumstances do change.”Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesAnd the golf deal is only the capstone of a busy week in which Prince Mohammed is also hosting the visiting U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who represents another once-vocal critic of the kingdom, President Biden. On the campaign trail in 2020, Mr. Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and other human rights violations.“I’m not going to lie. This is a moment that a lot of us are relishing,” Prince Talal Al Faisal, a Saudi businessman and royal family member, said in an interview. Like many Saudis, the prince said that he felt the stream of negative news coverage about his country was often unfair or inaccurate.“It gets to a point where you think to yourself, OK, this is hopeless,” he said. “And a moment like this makes you think, ‘Hang on, well, if you try hard enough, you eventually get your way.’”Five years ago, this moment would have seemed virtually impossible.In 2018, Saudi agents murdered and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi exile who had fled to the United States, in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. The international condemnation was sharp, and for a brief time, it seemed like Prince Mohammed was facing isolation on the world stage.An American intelligence assessment determined that the crown prince had likely ordered the killing, a charge he has repeatedly denied.The murder was the peak of a broader crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia that continues today. But the icy mood did not last long.Within months, American and European chief executives who had canceled their appearances at conferences in the kingdom quietly returned. Prince Mohammed told visitors that he was determined to forge ahead with his plan to diversify the conservative Islamic kingdom’s economy and open it up socially.Foreign leaders began returning for visits. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which oversees about $650 billion in assets, continued to roll out high-profile investments around the world, such as LIV Golf.As Prince Talal notes, “We are, like it or not, central to a lot of the things that happen across the globe.”Saudi Arabia’s attempts to enter the world of golf had included an earlier approach to the PGA Tour about starting a partnership. But that approach was rebuffed, and it was only after the introduction of the rival LIV Golf last year — which provoked a bruising legal battle and eventually a series of secret meetings between PGA Tour leaders and Saudi officials — that Mr. Monahan and his lieutenants came around.Saudis have grown accustomed to seeing their former critics reversing course.In 2018, after Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Prince Mohammed “toxic” and a “wrecking ball,” vowing that he would never visit Saudi Arabia “as long as this guy is in charge.” Yet in April, Mr. Graham traveled to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and was photographed grinning with Prince Mohammed.“Things in Saudi Arabia are changing very quickly for the better,” he told ABC after his visit. “His vision for the country economically is transformative.”Indeed, in the span of five years, Prince Mohammed has made serious strides toward diversifying the oil-dependent economy, investing in mining, tourism and entertainment. Under him, the country ended a ban on women driving, significantly loosened gender segregation and even promoted electronic music raves in the desert, ripping apart ideas about what was possible in the kingdom.“Keeping up with Saudi Arabia is not only tough for non-Saudis but for Saudis themselves,” said Bader Al-Saif, assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. “This shock-and-awe approach hopes to deliver faster results than those delivered in previous waves in Saudi history,” he added.Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday.Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Royal Court, via ReutersDuring Mr. Blinken’s visit to the kingdom this week, he will attend a gathering of a global coalition to counter the terrorist group Islamic State. For Prince Mohammed, this summit represents another chance to demonstrate his leadership.He has been keen to hedge against Saudi Arabia’s past dependence on the United States, its main security guarantor.“The relationship now looks more like the way the U.S. relates to some European partners,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “Security cooperation is key and maintained by both sides, but the Saudis are flexing their muscles in an effort to become a regional and international actor of significance in a world in which power is diffused, and the U.S. picks its battles much more cautiously.”Just days before Mr. Blinken’s arrival on Tuesday, Prince Mohammed welcomed the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, for a visit. Next week, the Saudi Ministry of Investment will host a major gathering of Arab and Chinese businesspeople.And, at least for a few days, the kingdom can continue to bask in the glow of its golf victory.The head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, will also head the board of the new golf entity, though the PGA Tour will hold a majority of the board seats. The wealth fund has the exclusive right to invest in the new company going forward, opening the door for it to increase its stake in the years ahead.The deal protects Mr. al-Rumayyan, a golf aficionado, from the prospect of being deposed and scrutinized in American courtrooms, a risk that had loomed over him during the legal battles that the PGA Tour and LIV golf fought before their deal.Yasir al-Rumayyan, head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, is also chairman of the English soccer club Newcastle United.Scott Heppell/ReutersThe sovereign wealth fund has also managed to achieve quick results for its investment in the English soccer club Newcastle United, which qualified for the UEFA Champions League just 18 months after it was purchased.Critics have accused Saudi Arabia of using its spending power in sports to distract from its poor human rights record, allegations that Saudi officials have rejected.During his meeting with Prince Mohammed on Tuesday, Mr. Blinken “emphasized that our bilateral relationship is strengthened by progress on human rights,” Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said.But for Saudis whose family members remain in prison, targeted in the crackdown, such words offer little comfort.Abdullah al-Qahtani, a dual Saudi American citizen, has not heard from his father, Mohammed al-Qahtani, since October, when he disappeared shortly before he was scheduled to be released from a Saudi prison. He had been serving a 10-year prison sentence in relation to starting a human rights organization.A handout picture provided by the family of Mohammed al-Qahtani, who disappeared shortly before he was to be released from a Saudi prison where he was serving a 10-year sentence in relation to starting a human rights organization.Family of Mohammed al-Qahtani, via Agence France-Presse“It’s getting to the point where all the doors are shutting in our faces,’ the younger Mr. al-Qahtani said on Tuesday, during a virtual news conference. “What I want is to bring his issue to light, because they have to know. I know Secretary Blinken is going to be in Saudi. He has to bring up my dad’s situation.”Alan Blinder More