Trump Met PGA Tour Commissioner About Saudi Golf League Deal

President Trump met this week with the PGA Tour commissioner, the tour said on Thursday, as the Justice Department considers whether to approve a venture between the United States’ premier golf circuit and one backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

The meeting at the White House on Tuesday was an unusual foray for an American president into global sports diplomacy but squared with his decades-long ambitions to act as a sports power broker. It was also the latest expression of his closeness to LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed tour.

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

During the Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump also spoke by telephone with Yasir al-Rumayyan, the Saudi wealth fund’s governor and one of the most influential figures in Saudi Arabia, according to two people familiar with the session who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private talks.

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

Mr. Woods, the most celebrated player of his generation and another member of the tour’s board, had been scheduled to attend but did not participate because of the death of his mother, according to one of the people briefed on the meeting.

Mr. Woods’s agent did not respond to a request for comment. The wealth fund did not comment.

Since LIV thundered onto the professional golf scene three years ago, Mr. Trump, stung by the professional golf establishment’s distancing itself from him after his entry into politics, has been one of its most steadfast supporters and one of its most essential vendors.

His company has hosted LIV tournaments at courses up and down the East Coast — the circuit is scheduled to return to Trump National Doral, near Miami, in April — and Mr. Trump has been a regular presence. As he played in LIV’s professional-amateur competitions, he would routinely denigrate the PGA Tour and praise its rival and its Saudi patrons to anyone who would listen.

Now Mr. Trump is acting as something of a mediator for the prestigious American tour and the Saudi upstart that defied legions of naysayers to become a force in the sport. On Wednesday, the U.S. Open’s organizer announced a smoother pathway for LIV players to compete at the event, one of the sport’s four major tournaments.

Only two years ago, such a détente seemed improbable. The PGA Tour and LIV had spent 2022 and the first months of 2023 at bitter odds, as the Saudi league swept in to sign well-established stars to some of the most lucrative deals in sports history. LIV encouraged the Justice Department to investigate the PGA Tour for potential violations of antitrust law, and the tour spent months denouncing LIV and its Saudi financiers.

But in June 2023, after about two months of secret talks that stretched from San Francisco to Venice, the tour and LIV abruptly announced a plan to try to combine their businesses. The tentative agreement led to a truce of sorts in their clash over power, money and morality in global sports.

The two sides have yet to close a final deal, though. Federal antitrust officials have been reviewing a term sheet that called for the wealth fund to put $1.5 billion into a commercial arm that the PGA Tour and a group of top American sports investors created.

Justice Department officials have been particularly attuned to whether LIV and the PGA Tour, whose tournaments differ in format and length, are direct rivals and whether a deal might stifle competition in the United States.

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

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

The PGA Tour, which used to hold events at the Trump property in Doral, Fla., ended its relationship with Mr. Trump’s company during the 2016 campaign. Tim Finchem, who was then the tour’s commissioner, said the move was not “a political exercise” but “fundamentally a sponsorship issue.”

Mr. Trump also had a particular falling-out with the P.G.A. of America, which pulled its men’s championship tournament from a Trump course after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The Trump Organization and the group, which is distinct from the PGA Tour, later reached a settlement.

Soon after his election in November, Mr. Trump signaled his continued interest in the fate of professional golf’s negotiations. As president-elect, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Monahan for a round of golf at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. The next day, he saw Mr. al-Rumayyan at an event in New York.

Asked in November whether Mr. Trump could perhaps break the logjam, Rory McIlroy, one of the world’s top players, replied, “He might be able to.”

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

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