Caleb Surratt gives a thumbs up to teammate Jon Rahm on the 15th green during the first round of the LIV Golf Dallas golf tournament at Maridoe Golf Club. Mandatory Credit: Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Image According to Golf.com, 24 hours before the start of LIV Golf Hong Kong, a midnight flight from the Omani border on a jet arranged by Jon Rahm took seven players out of the war zone and evacuated them to safety.
LIV Golf is due to begin play at its annual event in Hong Kong on Thursday and has attempted to arrange travel from Dubai, which has been hit repeatedly during heightened tensions with Iran, Israel and the United States.
U.S. officials urged American citizens to evacuate 14 Middle Eastern countries, but only after damage had already occurred around Dubai International Airport, grounding flights. Several LIV golf players and caddies live in the UAE.
According to the report, Rahm’s plan called for players to work together from multiple locations in the Middle East to travel to Oman. The driving distance from downtown Dubai to the border is over 90 minutes. The typical flight time from Oman to Hong Kong is approximately 7 hours.
Golf.com reported that Lee Westwood, Anirban Lahiri, Thomas Detry, Sam Horsfield, Tom McKibbin, Adrian Meronk and Caleb Surratt, along with their caddies, were taken in the dark in a shuttle van to the Omani border, then transferred to another shuttle and taken to the tarmac where an aircraft was waiting to fly the crew to Hong Kong.
“I was scared,” Surratt told Golf.com via text Tuesday. “But it’s been okay since then. It was bad here on Sunday and Monday with the missile interception, but today it’s been okay all day.”
McKibbin and Surratt are members of Rahm’s Legion XIII.
They landed just before midnight local time and are all expected to take part in the event this weekend.
Laurie Canter, the eighth LIV golfer who was in Dubai, did not make the flight but was expected to arrive in time for the event to start, according to multiple reports. Limited openings were allowed at major airports in Dubai and Oman until late Wednesday.
–Field level media
