Donald Trump has supported the reintroduction of LIV Golf players on to the PGA Tour after the league announced the withdrawal of funding from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
The US president said he would love to see top golfers who defected to the LIV circuit playing regularly against the PGA Tour’s best as uncertainty engulfed the breakaway league following the announcement.
Trump, speaking at the Oval Office, was asked if the PGA Tour should welcome back golfers who jumped ship to LIV, lured by massive contracts backed by PIF. “Well I do,” he said.
“I’d love to see LIV. But I do believe that all of the golfers should be playing – the great golfers – should be playing against each other. I want to see Rory [McIlroy] playing Bryson DeChambeau. I want to see big Jon Rahm play Scottie [Scheffler], who is so great.
“There’s something nice about all of the players playing together. Now they’ll all be accepted by the tour … they’ll all be back on tour and it’ll be great,” Trump added.
LIV this week postponed a scheduled June tournament in New Orleans with officials saying they hoped to reschedule for later this year. The next scheduled event is set for 7-10 May at Trump National in suburban Washington.
“I’m not sure what’s happening with LIV, but they are playing at my course in two weeks, on the Potomac,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, the 2023 British Open champion Brian Harman said golfers who left the PGA Tour for LIV golf should face consequences if they want to return.
Harman, speaking at the PGA Tour’s Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral in Miami, said he expected there would be a path back but said it was too soon to predict just what it might be.
“I would think that the fans want everyone to be playing together and, you know, time heals all wounds,” the 39-year-old American said, although he noted there was “still some sentiment out here, especially with all the lawsuit stuff. That stuff’s going to be tough to get past”.
PGA Tour loyalists were angered when 11 golfers, including six-time champion Phil Mickelson, filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the Tour in 2022 challenging their suspensions by the tour after they signed big-money contracts with LIV when it was founded in 2021.
Five-time major-winner Brooks Koepka has returned to the PGA fold under a returning member program that includes substantial financial penalties. And Harman is in favour of continued consequences for possible future returnees.
“I think there has to be something,” he said, saying it would help ease “bad blood and resentment”.
But Harman noted that it was really too soon to say just how many golfers might be abandoning LIV.
“I’m not sure that they’re closing shop. The funding’s drying up. They could secure funding from somewhere else and keep going. They have got a lot of big name players over there, guys that move the needle,” he said.
“Until it’s all done, until you’ve got guys that are actually calling and trying to come back to the tour, it’s not really a problem that we’re dealing with currently.”
Three-time major winner Jordan Spieth stated he was glad he wasn’t called on to make a decision after the tensions that erupted.
“I know olive branches were given out, you know, a couple months ago. Brooks took them up on it. So I’m not sure what would now change,” Spieth said.
Spieth said that even with the loss of Saudi funding “that doesn’t necessarily mean that LIV’s not going to still move on, too”.
“I think there’s just too many unknowns for me to have a good gauge on what would happen there,” he added.
But Spieth did indicate he found the issue of golfers returning from LIV a freighted topic, and he was happy not to be among those deciding any terms for their returns.
“There’s just a lot of different things that happened over the last four years,” he said. “I’m kind of glad I’m not in that room.”
