Henrik Stenson is said to go over to the sawn LIV tour.
Now he is losing the title of Ryder Cup captain.
“It is not possible for him to continue,” he said in a statement.
Henrik Stenson is Swedish golf’s greatest male player of all time, with an absolutely fantastic career behind him. Last year, it was clear that the Swede will receive one of the most honorable assignments in golf, as captain of Europe’s Ryder Cup team this autumn.
Gets rid of the assignment
But now he gets rid of the title. In recent weeks, more and more rumors have surfaced that Stenson is close to the much-criticized LIV tour. The tour, which is funded by Saudi Arabia, has attracted large numbers of players from the PGA and European tours in recent months, and Stenson is said to have received a bid of over SEK 300 million to join.
And that decision now seems to have been made. The Ryder Cup has previously decided that players who play at LIV will be suspended from the Ryder Cup, and today the news came that Stenson will be stopped from his assignment.
“Due to decisions made by Henrik, it is now clear that he will not be able to fulfill the contractual assignments towards the Ryder Cup European Team that he previously undertook,” it is written in a statement.
Sawn huge
Players who have switched to LIV have been sawn considerably in recent months, and Henrik Stenson is no exception. Former golfer Rob Lee is not holding back criticism.
– He had an agreement with the tour that he will stay, and that he will be captain of the Ryder Cup. If he goes back to those obligations, he will plague his own destiny. He has done very well, but now he flushes it all down the toilet, says Lee, who is now an expert on Sky Sports.
The players who choose LIV have been heavily criticized for choosing money that is state-funded from Saudi Arabia. The country has received enormous criticism for its way of trying to wash away its bad reputation, especially for human rights, through sports. Amnesty has also totally sawn the tour and the players who choose it, on the grounds that they want to “cleanse its blood-soaked reputation”, something called sportswashing.
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