Earlier this month, Donald Trump indicated that helping reunify professional golf was not one of his priorities as he said he planned to dedicate his time to “other things” if he was elected president. But it seems that he has changed his mind in that regard.
During an appearance on the “Let’s Go!” podcast with Jim Gray and Bill Belichick earlier this month, Donald Trump said that he felt the country had “much bigger problems” than the current rift between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf and that planned to work on “other things” instead.
However, he also said that he thinks he could get a deal done to unify the two leagues within 15 minutes.
“I would say it would take me the better part of 15 minutes to get that deal done,” Trump said on the podcast. “I’m really going to work on other things, to be honest with you. I think we have much bigger problems than that. But I do think we should have one tour and they should have the best players in that tour.”
However, it seems that Trump has changed his mind.
Less than two weeks after winning the election – a time that is typically spent filling his cabinet and preparing to take office – Trump made time to meet with high-ranking representatives from both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, according to a report from the Washington Post.
“Even as he was filling out his Cabinet selections Friday, the president-elect played a round of golf with Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, according to two people familiar with the meeting. And at a UFC event Saturday night in New York, Trump sat between Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which launched LIV Golf in 2022 to compete with the PGA Tour,” Rick Maese wrote for the Washington Post this week.
“While the exact nature of and details from the meetings are uncertain, multiple people familiar with the process say the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund continue to discuss a partnership, even though an initial deadline to agree to terms passed more than 11 months ago.”
It’s not clear why Trump changed his mind and decided to prioritize these negotiations, but he clearly decided these conversations were worth his time even amid a busy time.
We’ll have to see whether or not he is able to help the two rival leagues come to a deal and unify professional golf.
