Seven LIV golfers and a corpse, who were stranded in the war-torn Middle East earlier this week, made their way safely to Hong Kong on Wednesday morning local time in a private jet paid for by their LIV stablemate Jon Rahma source close to the situation told GOLF.com.
The players – Caleb Surratt and Tom McKibbin, who play for Rahm’s Legion XIII team, along with Thomas Detry, Sam Horsfield, Anirban Lahiri, Adrian Meronk, Lee Westwood and caddy Terry Mundy – were stranded in Dubai, where airports were closed and flights canceled due to revenge attacks by Iran over Israel and some of its neighbors in the Persian Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates.
Some of the players have homes in Dubai and were trying to get to Hong Kong for this week’s LIV event, which starts on Thursday. But leaving Dubai became challenging when the city was surrounded by Iranian airstrikes. “It was scary,” Surratt told Golf Channeltalking about the scene in Dubai over the weekend when the unrest was at its worst. “But since then, it’s been OK. It was a bad Sunday and Monday here with missile interceptions.”
LIV Golf itself was exploring various options to get its players out, the source said, including a plan to run the group through London. “LIV did a great job of trying to get everyone out of there,” the source said. (LIV officials declined to comment for this story.) But Rahm was also working on his channels, and his offer — to charter a private jet from neighboring Oman — offered a more direct route to Hong Kong.
“Do whatever you have to do, but get them out of there,” the Rahm source told his XIII Legion associates.
Rahm and his team arranged the flight through Rahm’s partnership with private aviation company VistaJet, the source said. The plan was officially set in motion when the airspace opened in Muscat, the capital of Oman, on Tuesday morning local time. (An eighth LIV player, Laurie Canterwas also in Dubai, but the source said Canter arranged his own plans to fly himself and his family out of Oman.)
The first step was exiting the United Arab Emirates, which required ground transportation. The source said Lahiri, who lives in Dubai, took the lead in lining up a vehicle to take them to the UAE-Oman border. The 280-mile journey from Dubai to Muscat normally takes about four-and-a-half hours but, the source said, “it turned into a lot longer simply because so many people were trying to do the same thing, so the traffic and the number of people crossing the border, it just backed everything up”.
When the players arrived at the border, they transferred their bags and clubs to a bus, which took them to the airport in Muscat where their plane awaited them on a busy tarmac.
After a brief refueling delay, the plane took off at 12:02 a.m. local time on Wednesday and landed in Hong Kong approximately eight hours later at 11:19 a.m. local time, giving players just over 24 hours to suit up and prepare for LIV’s third event of the season. All eight players who flew in from Oman are on stage and expected to play.
