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It’s been impossible to discuss LIV Golf (and, in turn, the bombshell merger that united the upstart league with the PGA Tour) without discussing its links to Saudi Arabia, the country that used its Public Investment Fund to give the venture the capital it needed to get off of the ground.
Some notable names have made some major missteps while discussing their decision to link up with an organization funded by a state with a human rights record that leaves plenty to be desired and well-documented links to the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of thousands of people on September 11th.
That includes Phil Mickelson—who dubbed them “scary motherf******s” in an interview he attempted to claim was off the record—and Bryson DeChambeau, who said “Nobody’s perfect” when asked about the topic in a fairly regrettable interview earlier this week.
The group 9/11 Families United understandably accused PGA Tour commissioner Jim Monahan of hypocrisy and betrayal in the wake of the merger, which came together with the help of Jimmy Dunne, a vice chairman at the investment bank Piper Sandler who sits on the organization’s board and helped broker the agreement.
Dunne personally knew dozens of people who were killed on 9/11, and on Thursday, he addressed how he grappled with Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the terrorist attacks while discussing the merger during an interview with Golf Channel.
Businessman Jimmy Dunne, who helped put together the PGA Tour-LIV deal, lost 66 of his colleagues on 9/11:
"The people I'm dealing with had nothing to do with it… if someone can find someone that unequivocally was involved with it I'll kill them myself." pic.twitter.com/kjMIn7tROH
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 8, 2023
Dunne stressed he (much like the aforementioned families) still thinks about the lives that were lost on 9/11 on a daily basis before making a very strong claim about what would happen if he found out any of the business partners the PGA Tour is now working with were linked to the attacks saying:
“I am quite certain—and I have had conversations with a lot of very knowledgeable people—that the people I’m dealing with had nothing to do with it, and if someone can find someone that was unequivocally involved with it, I’ll kill them myself. We don’t have to wait around.
But the reality is, we need to come together as a people…We have too much divisiveness, and at some point in time—whether it’s our view of the Japanese or our view of the Germans—there is a point in time where you have to say, ‘Let’s try to get to know one another.'”
It’s very unlikely this issue is going to stop rearing its head at any point in the near future, but Dunne has certainly made his position quite clear.