President-elect Donald Trump boasted during the campaign he would need about 15 minutes to get a deal done between the PGA Tour and the Saudi investors of LIV Golf. That started with four hours on the golf course with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan.
The Washington Post reported Monahan accepted an invitation from Trump to play golf last Friday at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The PGA Tour confirmed the outing in a statement.
“President-Elect Trump has always been a champion of the game of golf and Commissioner Monahan was honored to accept his invitation to play at Trump International,” the statement said. “The President-Elect and the Commissioner share a love for the game and the Commissioner enjoyed their time together.”
The next day, Trump attended a UFC heavyweight championship in New York with Elon Musk and Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the financial support of the rival LIV tour that has caused the massive rift in the game.
Monahan and al-Rumayyan played golf together in the Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland last month on the European tour.
The tour has not disclosed the nature of those discussions, and Monahan has not shared details even with key players to keep negotiations private.
The PGA Tour and PIF announced an agreement on June 6, 2023, for the Saudi sovereign wealth fund to become an investor in a new commercial venture by the PGA Tour. That quickly got the attention of the Justice Department, and while the agreement called for a Dec. 31 deadline, negotiations are still taking place.
The PGA Tour struck a deal with a consortium of sports owners, Strategic Sports Group, for an initial $1.5 million investment in PGA Tour Enterprises that could grow to $3 billion.
Meanwhile, golf remains deeply divided as the PGA Tour has banned LIV players — U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm among them — from competing in its tournaments.
All of golf’s best players meet only four times a year in the majors.
Trump joined the “Let’s Go!” podcast with Jim Gray and Bill Belichick on the eve of the election and said, “it would take me the better part of 15 minutes to get that deal done.”
“I’m really going to work on other things, to be honest with you,” Trump said on the podcast. “I think we have much bigger problems than that. But I do think we should have one tour and they…
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