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NORTH PLAINS, Ore. — Aside from three tense half-hour press conferences, the atmosphere at Pumpkin Ridge has been remarkably stress-free. The caddies can’t believe how well they’re being taken care of. Trainers, too. On the PGA Tour, they paid for his travel and lodging. At LIV, you’re careful. Members and employees are ecstatic to see all these tour professionals on their track.
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Pat Pérez feels like he won the lottery. Are they going to pay me, a 46-year-old tour pro who isn’t very good, all this dough and get to play less? Matt Wolff seems like a whole new person, liberated from the loneliness of PGA Tour life and genuinely excited to be part of a team, no matter how silly the team concept may seem. Bryson DeChambeau is hitting the streets in his full team, something he couldn’t do on the PGA Tour. It’s like everyone here is on vacation with all expenses paid. Maybe that vibe will change on Thursday, when the golf starts and they can play for more money than they get for being here. Maybe it won’t.
The LIVers, however, are not a cross-section of the Portland area as a whole. Not even close. Multiple sources, some of whom have spent years working at Pumpkin Ridge, described the local conversation around the first LIV event in the US as tense, divisive and the last thing the Portland area needed. The subject has been a constant topic of conversation among the Oregon golf community.
The concerns, of course, lie with the source of all that money that pays for caddies’ hotels, new player ships, and improvements to the Pumpkin Ridge facility that seem to come out of nowhere. The Public Investment Fund, under the direct control of the Saudi Arabian government, finances LIV Golf. That government’s abominable human rights record is no secret, to name just a few of the Saudis’ greatest successes: the 9/11 hijackers, the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the criminalization of homosexuality, but your involvement in this community hits home. made more difficult given the 2016 death of Fallon Smart, a 15-year-old who died on a Portland street hit by a speeding gold Lexus. That car was believed to be driven by Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah, a Saudi citizen living in Oregon on a student visa. According to The Oregonian, Noorah had already racked up 17 parking tickets and had a suspended license at the time of the incident. Noorah was placed on house arrest, but was never tried: he cut off his tracking monitor and disappeared in a black van. It is widely believed that he was taken back to Saudi Arabia.
Why, then, would a club willingly align itself with such toxicity? Especially in Portland, which for the past two years has been caricatured as a lawless liberal wasteland by powerful media outlets? Turns out it wasn’t exactly a choice.
Escalante Golf, the firm that bought Pumpkin Ridge from its original ownership group in 2015, brokered the deals without consulting members. (Escalante also owns The International, which will host the LIV event in Boston later this year.) As such, several members and employees left the club in disgust. One current member suggested that 16 members left the club, though he was quick to add that more than 30 had joined since LIV’s announcement. The exact numbers cannot be known.
“I wish Escalante wasn’t so deaf to bring all this negativity into our community,” says Lacy Erickson, former director of golf for the two Pumpkin Ridge courses. (This week’s event layout is a combination of the public Ghost Creek track and the private Witch Hollow track.) She left the club in December to work in sales for clothing brand Johnnie O. “It doesn’t seem like they’ve made any effort in terms of community outreach, doing anything for Oregon golf or just bringing anything positive here.”
On the contrary, it has brought great controversy. A coalition of Washington County mayors, which includes North Plains, sent a letter to Escalante asking them to review his decision. Before the invitation began, mayors from across Washington County wrote a letter to Escalante Golf. The mayors of North Plains, Tori Lenahan, and nearby Beaverton, where Nike’s world headquarters are located, spoke to KATU2 about their opposition to the event.
“While mayors historically don’t use our voices collectively, we come together to voice our concerns about the potential unintended risk that could have an effect on our community,” Lenahan said.
Beaverton added: “Our communities come from all over the world because of big companies like Nike, Intel and Columbia. But it also creates a lot of fear when we allow these things to happen in our community, and that’s one of the reasons you’re standing here.” today”.
On Thursday morning, hours before the start of the first round at 1 pm, a group of 9/11 survivors and their families will hold a press conference protesting the event in North Plains. Both Tuesday’s practice round and Wednesday’s pro-am were closed to the general public, so it’s unclear how many fans will attend the three-day tournament, or what the atmosphere might be.
The players, it should be noted, don’t seem too bothered. When asked if he had any concerns about where the money came from, Perez kept it simple: “No.” When asked to explain, he didn’t add much.
“I am playing golf. This group has given me the opportunity to play golf and have a different schedule, and that’s my only concern,” Perez said. events, but I’m here to play golf. That’s my deal. I have the opportunity to play golf, and that’s it”.
When asked a similar question, Martin Kaymer spoke of wanting to use golf as a force for good.
“Imagine you’re a kid in Saudi Arabia and you’ve only seen golf on TV,” the two-time Grand Slam winner said, “and then for the last three or four years you were able to watch live golf in your country. and you could even try it, like many other sports that Saudi Arabia brought to their country. I think you can look at it from that point of view as well, that you can inspire a different generation to do good, to do better, to do something with their lives that they never thought they would be able to do, and if we can inspire them to do something similar to what we’re doing, I think it’s a great opportunity for the rest of your life, to try something that every family member before you, every generation, has never done before.”
Gaylord Davis, a Portland businessman who bought the land Pumpkin Ridge sits on in the late 1980s and helped develop the club, said he, too, can separate the golf tournament from the people who pay for it. .
“I put my golf hat on and I’m excited to have the pros here,” Davis said. “We weren’t going to bring them here any other way. We weren’t hosting a PGA Tour event. We wouldn’t get a Ryder Cup. So that’s how we get the best of the world here. Look at the Olympics. That’s where everyone comes together, no matter how much the countries don’t love each other, they come together through sport.
“They have already done a lot of improvements to the clubhouse. New roofs, new floors, and that money comes from LIV. The camp is in perfect condition… Obviously, Khashoggi was murdered, and terrible things are happening. But I can separate that from golf. China is not too pure. There is Saudi gasoline in everyone’s car.”
Davis played in the pro-am on Wednesday alongside Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel, who won the $4 million grand prize at LIV’s inaugural event in London. His caddy for the day was Chris Smith, a former director of instruction at Pumpkin Ridge who left years ago to fill the same position at Eugene Country Club.
“There is already enough division in the world,” Smith said. “Sport always brings people together.”