If I Were an Athlete Whisperer...

I have been annoyed many times in the recent year by journalists grilling professional golfers about their intentions to join the LIV golf tour. For the uninitiated, the LIV golf tour is a new organization, funded by the Saudi Arabian government, that has offered tremendously lucrative incentives for golfers to defect from the PGA and European tours. It has been controversial because many view the LIV tour as a thinly veiled attempt to "sports wash" the Saudi image by distracting attention from their poor record on human rights and associating themselves with a popular sport. 

The annoying part of this development is that many media members have been extremely haughty in their approach to golfers who have joined LIV. Pointed Questions about the morality of supporting Saudi's heinous plot by joining the LIV tour have been all too common. Over and again I have watched golfers on live television squirm and stumble through a response.

If I were an Athlete Whisperer, coaching these golfers on their responses, you might see something like the following exchange on this topic:

Golf Journalist: How do you reconcile your sense of morality with the knowledge that you are helping an evil government "sports wash" their image to cover up a long record of human rights atrocities?

Golfer: That's a great question and I am glad you asked it. I've reflected on this quite deeply and I've come to understand that it's not the playing of golf that will affect the country's image. After all, an imperceptibly small percentage of the world can actually attend one of the tournaments. It occurs to me that the sports washing strategy only works if the LIV tournaments are amplified by the many arms and powerful reach of the media. Perhaps your inquiry is better directed at whoever is paying you to be here covering this story and posing these important questions. Perhaps you might be better served by asking this question of yourself. Please tell us, how do you reconcile your sense of morality with your much larger role in the Saudi sports washing strategy? 

I don't know if it is ignorance, laziness, or hypocrisy, but the average level of competence in the media seems low to me.  We just may be entering the golden age of the Athlete whisperer...