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Graeme McDowell still regrets the comments he made during the LIV Golf event in London. This great golfer was obviously not adequately prepared, and he unknowingly said a sentence for which many still resent him today. Graeme said the following; "If Saudi Arabia want to use the game of golf as a way for them to get to where they want to be, I think we're proud to help them on that journey." McDowell revealed that LIV leaders instructed him what to say, but that many misunderstood the sentence and viewed it in a different way.
"Going back to Centurion and that first press conference, I was not a paid ambassador for Saudi Arabia human rights," McDowell said on John Huggan's The Thing About Golf Podcast.
Graeme McDowell and his reaction
Graeme emphasized that he has no connection with Saudi Arabia.
His only connection is with LIV Golf and he was ready to do anything to help the Tour. McDowell never wanted to deny what his motives for joining LIV Golf were. He understood that it was a huge financial offer, and it was very difficult to refuse.
"I was a paid ambassador for a golf tour. You start answering questions that can't be answered. I regret those answers, not that they were necessarily wrong; that was what we had been prepped to say by this golf tour that's paying me.
I'm not being paid by the Saudi Arabian human rights organisation, I'm being paid by this new start-up golf tour, which is a financially lucrative opportunity for me at this stage in my career. The end. People say 'well, if he had just said it was about the money'
Of course it was about the money, of course it was. It didn't need saying. Of course that's what I was there for, it was a business decision."