Golf news: A look at the Champions Tour controversy
Troubles just seem to be piling up for this year’s edition of the Champions Tour. After the sponsorship woes that plagued the tour recently, the Champions Tour has now managed to arouse controversy on a very sensitive issue. This
week’s Allianz Championship, which will be taking place in Boca Raton, is being protested against by a group of Holocaust survivors and their families.
The Champions Tour is run by the PGA Tour and features golfers aged 50 and above. The most prominent and successful golfers usually go on to play in the Champions Tour in their later years, as it has a less taxing schedule and
playing format as compared to the full-time professional PGA or European Tours.
The Allianz Championship is the second event on the Champions Tour calendar and the first that will have a full field. Although the event starts on Friday, protestors have been denouncing the event since Monday. The main concern
of the protesters is the German Insurance Giant, Allianz, which is sponsoring the event. According to the 20 odd people who are protesting, Allianz has failed to pay full restitution to Holocausts survivors, amounting to an estimated two billion dollars.
Conversely, Allianz representatives said that they had done their part and all the payments were made to “persons unknown”. The lawyer representing the protestors retorted that these claims by the insurance giant were unquestionably
false.
The question that arises now is why are the protestors not suing the company directly then? The only proper way for addressing such claims is through the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims. Unfortunately,
the commission had stopped accepting claims way back in 2003.
It is quite easy to suspect that the protestors are only after the money. However, Judi Hannes, daughter of two Holocaust survivors and holder of insurance policies from her mother and maternal grandparents, claims that she voices
the opinion of most of the protestors when she says that the protests do not have anything to do with the money. “It's about the survivors, being the voice of those survivors. This insurance company is having a golf tournament and using money that belongs
to survivors,” she says.
The protests have undoubtedly cast a melancholy shadow over the upcoming Champions Tour event. So far, the only breakthrough in the situation has been Allianz agreeing to consider these World War II restitution claims. However,
as things stand, the company is actually under no legal obligation to make any monetary payments.
This marks the first time that a protest has been staged against Allianz during the tournament. An interesting fact is that the defending champion for the event is also a German - the Golf Hall of Famer, Bernhard Langer.
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