LIV sportwashing golf v PGA

[elvis]

5 hours ago, Total Longo said:

It was fantastic watching Poulter squirm in that presser, the absolute goon. Garcia basically saying he couldn't care less what people think as well, i wouldn't expect anything else from him.

At least we won't have to put up with that cunt poulter with his boring shit at the Ryder cup anymore , and also won't have to cringe at  wanker Westwood

bottling it whenever he gets anywhere near a major win . Fuck em the greedy soulless cunts

[Bobby Hundreds]

Look murder and brutality is fine if they are paying me to ignore it and promote how good they actually are.

[Captain Turdseye]

Mickelson has got a huge gambling problem. He needs the dough.  

[sir roger]

A bit surprised DeChambeau has signed up.

[magicrat]

Mickelson, Westwood , Poulter and most of the rest past their sell by dates and just after a last free lunch. Not that arsed tbh 

[TheHowieLama]

12 minutes ago, magicrat said:

Mickelson, Westwood , Poulter and most of the rest past their sell by dates and just after a last free lunch. Not that arsed tbh 

Dustin Johnson is easily the biggest name in golf right now.

[Red74]

If I was one of these golfers I’d ask the media if there’s a ban on dealing with the Saudi’s. Asking them if they’d have played in apartheid South Africa or Putins Russia now has no relevance at all if there’s no embargo on them and we’re sending fighter jets for them to slaughter poor Yemeni’s without any form of censure from the same hypocritical media. F1’s getting established out there and Eddie Hearns determined to take Joshua there and imo, we’re not far off seeing the CL final in that region soon. 

 

However, I cannot fucking stand golf bores and that slimy little cunt Ian Poulter deserves everything he gets so fuck him & them.

 

[magicrat]

12 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

Dustin Johnson is easily the biggest name in golf right now.

He hasn't won for a couple of years , is outside the top ten in the rankings and in his late thirties. He has had injury issues and frankly looks well behind the likes of Scheffler and Thomas. He might be the biggest name on this new tour but he is arguably past his best . Seems to me there is a definite "changing of the guards" on the PGA tour right now and that is influencing some of the decisions of the defectors.  

[Captain Turdseye]

Does DJ even have fans?
 

I wonder how many people have heard of him compared to Tiger Woods. 

[TheHowieLama]

2 hours ago, magicrat said:

He hasn't won for a couple of years , is outside the top ten in the rankings and in his late thirties. He has had injury issues and frankly looks well behind the likes of Scheffler and Thomas. He might be the biggest name on this new tour but he is arguably past his best . Seems to me there is a definite "changing of the guards" on the PGA tour right now and that is influencing some of the decisions of the defectors.  

He won the Masters two years ago and was the world number 1 last year.

 

Scheffler has the star power of an under ripe turnip.

[sir roger]

I am a bit unsure on this this.

 

On one side the golfers it has taken on are very much 'Cunts R'Us', but I can't work out why sportsmen are being vilified constantly while the government ( with the assistance of members of the Royal family ) are behind the sale of billions of pounds worth of arms with hardly any query.

[magicrat]

41 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

He won the Masters two years ago and was the world number 1 last year.

 

Scheffler has the star power of an under ripe turnip.

Dustin Johnson hardly Mr Personality 

 

[TheHowieLama]

Just now, magicrat said:

Dustin Johnson hardly Mr Personality 

 

Chicks dig him.

[Captain Turdseye]

2 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Chicks dig him.

He’s a cool mofo, no doubt about that, but there’s no way he’s the biggest name in golf. 

[magicrat]

6 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Chicks dig him.

Length off the tee probably related to an enormous wang 

[TheHowieLama]

54 minutes ago, Captain Turdseye said:

He’s a cool mofo, no doubt about that, but there’s no way he’s the biggest name in golf. 

If Scottie Scheffler is then that is the PGA's biggest issue.

Of the current players only the Magic Mullet sticks out - cuz he has a mullet.

 

Someone mentioned Justin Thomas - that's another wet blanket.

He has won maybe three times in the last three years.

[Captain Turdseye]

38 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

If Scottie Scheffler is then that is the PGA's biggest issue.

Of the current players only the Magic Mullet sticks out - cuz he has a mullet.

 

Someone mentioned Justin Thomas - that's another wet blanket.

He has won maybe three times in the last three years.

The biggest name is obviously still Tiger. 
 

DJ and Bryson are defo in the group below that, but there’s plenty of others with the same stature. Rahm, McIlroy, Smith, Morikawa, Spieth, Koepka, etc. 

 

JT has already won a major this year, coming from seven shots back on Sunday. Hardly a wet blanket. 

[Captain Turdseye]

As I’ve said in the other thread, Netflix are filming a behind the scenes thing this year, trying to do for golf what ‘Drive to Survive’ did for F1. 
 

They’ve picked a hell of a year to do it. I can’t wait. 

[TheHowieLama]

27 minutes ago, Captain Turdseye said:

JT has already won a major this year, coming from seven shots back on Sunday. Hardly a wet blanket. 

He is a complete wet blanket and genuinely unlikeable. 

That tournament says it all about where the PGA is currently. A bunch of guys you never heard of collapsing in the final round. Riveting.

[Captain Turdseye]

 

As you may have gathered, something a bit like a golf tournament is taking place at somewhere that is not quite London.

The Centurion Club, which sounds ancient but is nine years old, is in Hemel Hempstead. Its website, however, says it is in the slightly more upmarket (but much more Roman) St Albans, which is on the other side of the motorway that divides the Hertfordshire towns.

St Albans, by the way, is named after the first English martyr. He was a centurion. It would have taken him a day to march from Londonium to Verulamium, St Albans’ old address, and it is an hour by car today. Is this a minor geographic detail or illustrative of an event that is not what it says it is?

For example, on the tournament’s first day, there was a flypast by planes that looked a bit like Spitfires, but they weren’t, and there was a fanfare played by guys who looked like they might stand guard outside Buckingham Palace but were actually local musicians in hired costumes.

There is a fan village with more cosplay, traditional letter and phone boxes, a double-decker bus, a merchandise stand, crazy golf, a driving range, a big stage for the post-event concerts, bars and food stalls. A bit like a festival, then, but without a crowd.

There are cameras and commentators but no TV contracts. There is a LOT of money at stake but very few of the tens and tens in attendance have paid anything and there are no advertising hoardings or sponsor’s tents.

The invited field of 48 golfers play three rounds, not four, and they start in “shotgun” fashion, which means the 16 three-balls are spread around the course and begin their rounds at the same time. The idea is to fit the action into a more digestible afternoon slot but it still took them nearly five hours to get around on Thursday.

There are some big names in the field, most notably Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, numbers two and three on the PGA Tour’s all-time earnings list. But there are also half a dozen guys ranked outside the world’s top 1,000, including two amateurs. Johnson, for what it is worth, is the highest-ranked player in action. He is 15th.

There are drives, approach shots and putts, but no cuts, and because even the last-place finisher is going home with at least $120,000, there is no jeopardy. And it shows.

That does not mean there is no controversy at the first edition of the LIV Golf Invitational Series, though. Oh no, there is plenty of that. Because as well as being an attempt to make golf more attractive to the TikTok generation — like cricket’s T20 format — it is also the latest chapter in the Big Book of Sportswashing and the opening shots in a battle for control of an entire sport.

Phil Mickelson, left, and Dustin Johnson both received reported nine-digit guarantees to join LIV Golf. (Aitor Alcalde / LIV Golf via Getty Images)

Let us tackle those heavyweight issues in that order, as that is how events have played out this week.

LIV Golf is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the sovereign wealth fund the Gulf state is using to turn its massive fossil fuel-based wealth into a more diversified economy and better image abroad. These goals are outlined in Vision 2030, the strategic plan the country’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman launched in 2016. MBS, as he is better known, is also PIF’s chairman.

MBS, however, is probably best known outside his kingdom for ordering the kidnap, murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi by a death squad at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. A Saudi author and journalist, Khashoggi had become a noted dissident by the time of his death and was working for the Washington Post. MBS has always denied any involvement but the Turkish authorities and intelligence agencies from around the globe believe otherwise.

This partly explains why Saudi Arabia’s image could use some polish. This and Saudi Arabia’s absence of democracy, trade unions or free press; its repression of women and members of the LGBTQI community; interference in Yemen’s long civil war; and the alarming number of people it executes every year, a number disproportionately made up of the country’s Shiite minority.

So, PIF has a lot of work to do but $600 billion is a tidy sum. Not all of that is going on the likes of Mickelson and Johnson — just a reported $200 million and $150 million, respectively — but at least $60 billion of it has been earmarked for sport-related projects, of which there are many.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has hosted heavyweight title fights, Spanish football finals, Formula 1 races, the Dakar Rally, wrestling events, tennis tournaments and lots of golf. In fact, Johnson’s most recent win came at the Saudi International in 2021. It was the second time he had won it in three years.

And last year, PIF completed the purchase of 80 percent of Newcastle United. You may remember. We only wrote about it every week for 18 months.

So, LIV Golf is the latest show from the people who brought you all of these other hits/attempts to airbrush Saudi Arabia’s grisly reputation. Because that is where we have arrived: how you feel about everything in the paragraphs above is entirely up to you and you have probably made your mind up about it many years ago.

The term sportswashing might be relatively new but the concept is not, and it certainly was not invented by Saudi Arabia or any of its Gulf neighbours, who have all been busy hosting big events, fights, finals, races and tournaments, too.

There will be many of you reading this who will agree with the kicking Mickelson, Graeme McDowell, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood got in the pre-tournament press conferences, when they were asked if they were “Saudi stooges,” how they felt about “taking blood money” or if there was anywhere they would not play, Putin’s Russia or apartheid-era South Africa, for example.

And you will also, no doubt, nod along with the likes of Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, who told The Athletic: “It’s been extremely disappointing to hear a number of golf’s best-known figures attempting to play down the terrible murder of Jamal Khashoggi while sidestepping the real gravity of Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record.

“Platitudes about golf being a ‘force for change’ mean very little if players are acting as unofficial arms of the Saudi government’s PR machine.”

There has been plenty more like that in TV bulletins, radio phone-ins, podcasts and newspaper editorials. When it comes to golf in the UK, only the Open Championship, Masters or Ryder Cup gets as much media coverage as this quirky little experiment has garnered.

But, if the Newcastle United experience is a guide, just as many of you will be shouting, “What about the tobacco industry using sport to advertise cancer sticks in the past?”; “What about the arms we sell Saudi Arabia?”; “What about PIF’s investments in Starbucks and Uber?”; “What about China hosting two Olympics in the last 14 years?”; or “What about the public transport trade unions going on strike this summer for more money? It’s always about money. What’s the difference?”

All of those arguments were put forward by fans on Thursday. A group who appear to have made their peace with Saudi Arabia’s nation-building efforts. If there was a note of criticism for the players among the spectators it was that it would be much better if they all just admitted Rory McIlroy is right when he says the LIV Golfers have signed up with the Saudis for “boatloads of money”, not because they believe the “grow the game” spiel.

“Are you asking me if sportswashing works?” sighs Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch when The Athletic called to tell her about the mood on the ground.

“Yes, of course it does, I’ve been talking about it since 2006. But it only works up to a point. Did the ‘Genocide Games’ in Beijing this year work for the International Olympic Committee? I’m not so sure. And will it work for FIFA in Qatar later this year? How does Putin’s World Cup look now? Is it possible the world’s approval in 2018, while he was already fighting an illegal war in Ukraine, embolden him to send in the tanks this year?

“This is sport’s annus horribilis and there is going to be a much-needed rethink about who international sports organisations do business with. Because it’s not helping them, their sports or the athletes.”

The arguments pile up on both sides and while some of you will be already racing to the comment section to tell us human rights are absolute and should trump all other considerations, it is hard to get past the feeling that we may have missed our tee time for this debate.

Those Saudi Internationals won by Johnson were on the European Tour that is now known as the DP World Tour, after its sponsor, a Dubai-based multinational logistics company. The same DP World that owns P&O Ferries, the British firm that sacked all 800 of its staff earlier this year because it wanted to replace them with cheaper agency workers. Nice people to do business with. The European Tour first went to the Gulf in 1989. It has been going to China for years.

Is it just the scale of LIV Golf’s ambition that upsets us? Is a little bit of sportswashing OK, just as long as they don’t rub our faces in it?

Professor Simon Chadwick is the director of the Centre for Eurasian Sports Industry by the emlyon business school.

“It appears to me that the now ubiquitous phrase ‘sportswashing’ has become a simple, convenient way for some to characterise the growing phenomenon of Gulf investment in sport,” says Chadwick.

“We may claim that Saudi Arabia is sportswashing but what remains unclear is how sportswashing works. After all, most of us are currently talking about human-rights abuses rather than golf, which begs the question: when does the sportswashing effect kick-in?

“We need to know what the links are between a country’s motives for investing in sport, how these impact upon the attitudes of people towards that country and, in turn, how they shape people’s behaviours. Are the Saudis trying to persuade people to go on golf holidays on the Red Sea coast or is there something more insidious behind their spending?

“(But) it is important not to overestimate the power of Saudi Arabian spending on sport. For many, the creation of new events fueled by state investment can often feel contrived and inauthentic. Embedding such events in the global sporting system demands changes to established cultures of consumption amongst fans. Such culture changes do not come quickly, they take place over years perhaps even decades.

“If Saudi Arabia is to realise whatever goals it is pursuing in golf, then it needs to commit to the long-term. Otherwise, history will at best judge the country as having been whimsical; at worst, the country will forever be seen as having tried to sportswash.”

Greg Norman, center, has been the face of LIV golf, though not given a microphone this week. (MB Media / Sipa USA via AP)

The Athletic spoke to a British journalist who works for a golf publication in Middle East. We asked him if he thought PIF would care about if the first season of LIV Golf events — eight of them altogether, with five in the US — made a huge financial loss.

“They wouldn’t care at all,” he explains. “They want to turn Saudi Arabia into Dubai. This is a massive investment in the tourism industry. They’ll spend whatever it takes. What else are they going to do with their money?”

That brings us neatly to the second of the week’s (or generation’s?) weighty issues: what Saudi Arabia’s interest in golf means for the sport and very probably all other sports. too.

LIV Golf’s driving force is actually former world number one Greg Norman. The Australian has been trying to shake up the global golf calendar for years but he has never had a backer like PIF before. When the series was first launched, Norman told reporters he had $2 billion to spend — mainly for enticing players — over the next two years. He has subsequently said he has been promised another $2 billion for the second stage of the project: turning it into a 14-event series by 2024.

He also dismissed the Khashoggi issue by saying “we all make mistakes,” which explains why he has been a very visible presence at Centurion — greeting each player as they came to the first tee, and hugging LIV Golf’s managing director, and Newcastle director, Majed Al Sourour when the first shots in this power struggle were fired — but has been kept well away from any microphones.

Most of the talking here has been done by the players and, after the bruising experiences of Tuesday and Wednesday, they are literally sticking to the script they have been given by LIV Golf’s media advisors, who include President George W. Bush’s former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. That cheat sheet found its way to a journalist’s inbox in the press tent on Thursday and was soon circulated. It meant we could save time transcribing their answers to questions about “money grabs” and their bans from the PGA Tour.

The latter was confirmed half an hour into the tournament when the PGA Tour released a statement that said the 17 members of its tour in the LIV Golf field were now suspended. Johnson and Kevin Na had preempted this by resigning earlier this week and others, such as Sergio Garcia and McDowell, jumped just before they were pushed on Thursday.

“These players have made their choice for their own financial-based reasons,” wrote PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan in a two-page letter to those Phil, DJ and the gang have left behind. “But they can’t demand the same PGA Tour membership benefits, considerations, opportunities and platform as you. That expectation disrespects you, our fans and our partners.”

World number six Justin Thomas, who won the second major of his career at the PGA Championship last month, seemed to speak for many at the PGA Tour’s Canadian Open when he said he was “pleased” with Monahan’s missive.

“Anybody that’s shocked clearly hasn’t been listening to the message that Jay and everybody’s been putting out,” he said. “They took that risk going into it, whether they thought it was a risk or not. I have great belief and great confidence in the PGA Tour and where we’re going and where we’re continuing to grow, and those guys just aren’t going to be a part of it.”

To be fair, most of the LIV Golf brigade pretended not to be that bothered. Only Poulter, who grew up near the course but has been largely based in Florida since 2005, looked and sounded shocked by the news, as he told reporters he had done “nothing wrong” and would be appealing against the sanction. It has not been a great week for England’s Ryder Cup stalwart; he dismissed the question about playing a tournament for money in Russia as “speculation” when he meant “hypothetical”…unless Putin is planning a Russian challenge to golf’s world order, too.

Norman has already told everyone who joined his venture that PIF would have their backs in court. Some, like Mickelson and Johnson, may well not want to play in PGA Tour events again — they certainly do not need the money. But all the LIV golfers will want to play in the sport’s four majors and while that avenue has not been officially closed yet — as they are all run by different bodies — most of the players need World Golf Ranking points to earn their spots and Norman cannot currently provide them.

For the record, LIV Golf issued their own statement soon after Monahan’s.

“Today’s announcement by the PGA Tour is vindictive, and it deepens the divide between the tour and its members,” it said. “It’s troubling that the tour, an organisation dedicated to creating opportunities for golfers to play the game, is the entity blocking golfers from playing.

“This certainly is not the last word on this topic. The era of free agency is beginning as we are proud to have a full field of players joining us in London, and beyond.”

The era of free agency…just let that settle in. Because what is the PGA Tour, or the DP World Tour or Asian Tour, for that matter? Sure, it says it is a not-for-profit organisation, with a charitable arm, but its shareholders are its members and they are all millionaires. Monahan is on $4 million a year.

It was set up in 1968 when tour professionals decided to break away from the Professional Golfers’ Association of America, whose membership was dominated by club pros. The move gave the best players control of the calendar and meant they did not need to share the sport’s burgeoning commercial and media income so widely.

Billy Casper was the top earner on tour in 1968, with total winnings of just over $205,000, which would be worth $2 million today if adjusted for inflation. Jordan Spieth won six times that amount in 2015. As previously mentioned, Mickelson is second on the career earnings list at just under $95 million, with Johnson third at $73 million. They have just doubled those totals by committing to a couple of years of LIV Golf. That’s living alright.

And when you put it like that, it becomes easier to see why Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open champion, has already confirmed he is joining Norman’s rebels at the next event in Portland, Oregon at the end of the month. Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters winner, is widely expected to come on board, too, as are Rickie Fowler and two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson.

None of these guys has been winning much on the PGA Tour of late but they are all well-known faces, the type of guys CBS, ESPN and NBC had in mind when they paid the PGA Tour $680 million in a nine-year rights deal in 2020, the familiar names the tour’s many corporate backers expect to see.

But guys like Mickelson have been waiting for a gal like LIV to come along for a while. The PGA Tour is fiercely meritocratic. If you play well, you do well. But if you miss the cut, you go home with nothing. which means you have made a loss on the week, as each player is the CEO of his own enterprise, paying for his agent, caddy, coach, dog walker, driver, physiotherapist, sports psychiatrist, the whole entourage.

Sure, the big stars will be better insulated. as they will have bigger sponsorships, but Monahan does not pay appearance fees. There are no freebies for turning up. The Saudi International paid Johnson to come and he needed a waiver from the PGA Tour to accept the invite. Give them an inch…

And Mickelson wants a mile. He wants more control of his schedule and a bigger slice of the pie because he provides the eyeballs the broadcasters and sponsors crave.

The 51-year-old spelled all this out in an interview with golf writer Alan Shipnuck that was published in February. A remarkably candid “Lefty” told his biographer he was flirting with the Saudis, despite them being “scary motherfuckers” who kill journalists, because it was “leverage” to get what he wanted from the “greedy” PGA Tour.

The truth did not set Mickelson free. His sponsors ditched him and he was either suspended by the tour or he just benched himself so he could do some more therapy, travel, become a “better version of himself”, watch his nephew play Little League and his niece play lacrosse and generally stay away from Shipnuck.

Quite how seriously he is still taking that last dose of self-help became clear on Thursday when two bouncers removed the American journalist from the area where the players were giving post-round interviews. This shocking overreaction became even weirder when Shipnuck was sent a picture of the incident by another journalist and Norman can be seen watching his defenestration like a gangland boss. The man who reveled in his Great White Shark nickname as a player had only just texted the writer to say he knew nothing about it.

A cynic might say Shipnuck got away lightly compared to Khashoggi.

So what is going to happen next?

Well, Shipnuck has already said he only wanted to ask Mickelson what club he used on 16 and will go to Portland, and beyond, to keep asking questions like that.

More golfers will leave the PGA Tour, meaning the next LIV Golf events are unlikely to have amateurs in the field. That will persuade broadcasters and streaming services that do not have exclusive contracts with the PGA Tour to take a punt on LIV Golf’s perfectly professional, albeit ludicrously hyperbolic, coverage. The Saudi Golf League, as Monahan calls it, are putting it all out there for free at the moment on Facebook, YouTube and their website. The audience was a steady 100,000 viewers for most of Thursday afternoon.

Wider coverage and bigger audiences will lead to more interest. Pretty soon someone will pay LIV Golf some serious money to be associated with the series, a Saudi firm, perhaps, or maybe another company that PIF has invested in, there are quite a few. Before long, LIV Golf might be able to charge a fee for its media rights.

Perhaps the team element of the LIV Golf experience, which seems so pointlessly tacked-on at the moment, will make sense as the four-man groupings the players are arranged into at the start of each tournament morph into T20-style franchises or F1 teams that actually carry value. That seems a stretch now, as teams not based on my town playing your town have never caught on in any other sport, but who knows, perhaps someone will want to back the 4 Aces, Iron Heads or Majesticks. The Athletic saw someone buy a Majesticks cap for £25 in the shop on Thursday.

Or maybe this is all collapses within a year and everyone promises to never talk about it again. After all, that is basically what happened with football’s European Super League.

In the meantime, there is some real golf next week at the U.S. Open at Brookline, a course only 30 minutes drive from downtown Boston. Everyone will be there, including fans, and everyone will have to earn their pay cheques the old-fashioned way, over four days and 72 holes. Millions will watch it on TV and it will be great.

But will it grow the game?

[Captain Turdseye]

31 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

He is a complete wet blanket and genuinely unlikeable. 

That tournament says it all about where the PGA is currently. A bunch of guys you never heard of collapsing in the final round. Riveting.

You sound like you’re in favour of all this stuff. You like the shotgun starts? Watched any of it? I checked the leaderboard an hour ago and Mickelson was +6. 
 

Sounds like quite the spectacle. 

[TheHowieLama]

14 minutes ago, Captain Turdseye said:

You sound like you’re in favour of all this stuff. You like the shotgun starts? Watched any of it? I checked the leaderboard an hour ago and Mickelson was +6. 
 

Sounds like quite the spectacle. 

Nah - the whole thing is bogus. I just checked the leaderboard and I have heard of two guys (one is DJ) in the top 10.

 

Hennie du Plessis is a great porn name though.

 

[polymerpunkah]

It will be interesting to see how the fans react to them at the next major.

 

I'm guessing the folks who wave those little "quiet" signs when the players are teeing off are going to get some exercise.

 

 

 

 

 

[No2]

3 hours ago, sir roger said:

I am a bit unsure on this this.

 

On one side the golfers it has taken on are very much 'Cunts R'Us', but I can't work out why sportsmen are being vilified constantly while the government ( with the assistance of members of the Royal family ) are behind the sale of billions of pounds worth of arms with hardly any query.

 

You simply can't compare an individual with a state, countries have to deal with nasty bastards from all parts of the globe. A country wouldn't function if they told everyone to fuck off, inflation right now is great example, remove one nasty cunt and it already starts falling apart.

 

DJ doesn’t have any such dilemma,  he could retire having earned $90m or $160m, that is a choice in its purest form, he can say no and his great grandkids will still get a yacht for their 18th birthday. He's decided he has a price that clears his conscience for a chopped up journalist or 2, he's entitled to that but everyone else is entitled to think he's a prick.

[TheHowieLama]

Update:

 

In 19th place (above Poulter, Garcia, Westwood, Mickelson et al) we have the legend that is Richard Bland.

 

Richard Bland.