Trump hails LIV, slams PGA Tour

NEW YORK • Former United States president Donald Trump praised the Saudi backers of the controversial LIV Golf Invitational Series on Thursday, calling them his friends, while criticising the PGA Tour.

The billionaire, wearing his signature red cap emblazoned with his familiar campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, spoke briefly before teeing off in the Pro-Am segment of the LIV Golf tournament at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, which he owns. The third event of the nascent series teed off yesterday.

"I've known these people for a long time in Saudi Arabia and they have been friends of mine for a long time," Trump said, after taking practice swings on the driving range.

"They've invested in many American companies. They own big percentages of many, many American companies and frankly, what they are doing for golf is so great, what they are doing for the players is so great. The salaries are going to go way up."

LIV is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which is overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been accused of being the mastermind of the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Bedminster club had previously been scheduled to host the PGA Championship in May, but the PGA of America moved it to Oklahoma after last year's Capitol insurrection, which Trump has been accused of instigating.

Since then, Trump has sided with LIV, who are also paying him an unknown sum for the use of his club for the 54-hole tournament.

The rebel circuit has lured many of the world's top golfers from the PGA and DP World Tours by offering hundreds of millions of dollars, while its events offer the richest purse in the sport's history.

"The PGA was not loved by a lot of the players... for a long time," Trump said. "Now they have an alternative and nobody ever would have known it was going to be a gold rush like this.

"I think nobody ever knew that they were going to be paying signing bonuses. The prize money was going to be much higher, you know, four, five, six times higher... A lot of money and it's even going up. But the PGA Tour hasn't acted well."

National Basketball Association great Charles Barkley, another invited guest of LIV, also hit out at the hypocritical views held by critics of the Greg Norman-fronted tour.

"You can't pick and choose who you want to be mad at," the TNT presenter said, reeling off some of the American multi-national companies the Saudi sovereign wealth fund has invested in.

"They should be mad at Berkshire Hathaway, Tesla, Bank of America, Disney. But they're not. They are just mad at these golfers."

NYTIMES