Trump met PGA Tour Commissioner about Saudi Golf League Deal

President Trump met this week with the PGA Tour Commissioner, the trip said on Thursday, when the Ministry of Justice finds whether he would approve a bet between the United States’ leading golf circuits and one supported by Saudi -Arabia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund.

The White House meeting on Tuesday was an unusual trip for a US president of global sports diplomacy, but squared with his decades long ambitions to act as a sports force broker. It was also the latest expression of his proximity to life golf, the Saudi supported tour.

In addition to PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, Trump hosted Adam Scott, who won the Masters tournament in 2013 and sits on PGA Tour’s board.

During the oval office meeting, Mr. Trump also by phone with Yasir al-Rumayyan, the Saudi Wealth Fund’s governor and one of the most influential figures in Saudi Arabia, according to two people, to describe the private conversations.

“We asked the president to be involved for the benefit of the game, the good of the country and for all the countries involved,” said Mr. Monahan, Mr. Scott and Tiger Woods in a joint statement Thursday afternoon after New York times asked on Wednesday night about the meeting. “We are grateful that his leadership has brought us closer to a final agreement that paves the way for the reunion of men’s professional golf.”

Mr. Woods, the most famous player in his generation and another member of the tour of the tour, was scheduled to participate, but did not participate because of his mother’s death, according to one of the people who were informed about the meeting.

Mr. Wood’s agent did not respond to a comment request. The Wealth Fund did not comment.

Since Liv thundered on the professional golf scene three years ago, Mr. Trump, stabbed by the professional golf business that distanced himself from him after his entry into politics, has been one of its most steadfast supporters and one of its most important suppliers.

His company has hosted life tournaments on courses up and down on the East Coast – the circuit is scheduled to return to Trump National Doral, near Miami, April – and Mr. Trump has been a regular presence. When he played in Life’s professional amateur competitions, he would routinely deniger the due to the Tour and praise its rival and his Saudi patrons for anyone who would listen.

Now Trump is acting as something of a broker for the prestigious American tour and the Saudi Upstart that defied legions of Naysayers to become a strength in the sport. On Wednesday, the US Open’s organizer announced a smoother way for life players to compete at the event, one of the sport’s four major tournaments.

Just two years ago, such a thing seemed unlikely. PGA Tour and Liv had spent 2022 and the first months of 2023 at Bitter Odds when the Saudi League swept in to sign well -established stars for some of the most lucrative offers in sports history. Liv urged the Ministry of Justice to investigate the PGA tour of potential violations of the antitrust law, and the trip spent months condemning life and its Saudi financiers.

But in June 2023, after about two months of secret conversations that stretched from San Francisco to Venice, the trip and Life suddenly announced a plan to try to combine their business. The preliminary deal led to a ceasefire of kinds in their clashes over power, money and morals in global sports.

However, the two sides have not yet completed a final agreement. Federal antitrust -officials have undergone an expression that called for the wealth fund to put $ 1.5 billion in a commercial arm that the PGA tour and a group of the best American sports investors created.

The Ministry of Justice’s officials have been particularly matched by whether life and PGA Tour, whose tournaments are different in format and length, are direct rivals and whether an agreement can stifle competition in the United States.

In December, Mr. Woods that the negotiations were “very fluid”, though he also described them as “constructive.”

Mr. Trump, an avid golfer, has spent years predicting a kind of deal between PGA Tour and Life. But even as he enjoyed rounds with top players, Trump has had a complex relationship with America’s golf elite in recent years.

PGA Tour, who used to hold events on the Trump property in Doral, Fla., Ended his relationship with Mr. Trump’s company during the 2016 campaign. Tim Finchem, who was the tour’s commissioner at that time, said the move was not “a political exercise,” but “basically a sponsor problem.”

Mr. Trump also had a particular falling with PGA of America, who drew his men’s championship tournament from a Trump course after January 6, 2021, Riot at Capitol. The Trump organization and the group that differ from the PGA Tour later reached a solution.

Shortly after his election in November, Mr. Trump his continued interest in the fate of professional golf negotiations. As a presidential elected, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Monahan for a round of golf at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. The next day he saw Mr. Al-rumayyan at an event in New York.

In November, asked if Mr. Trump might break Logjam, replied Rory McIlroy, one of the world’s best players, “he might be able to be.”

“Obviously, Trump has a good relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Mr. McIlroy, a former PGA Tour board member who played with Mr. Trump in 2017. ”He has a good relationship with golf. He is a lover of golf. So maybe. Who knows that? But I think as president of the United States again, he probably has bigger things to focus on than golf. “

But for at least a short time on Tuesday, the day he publicly flowed an American takeover of Gaza, was Mr. Trump firmly focused on golf.