Donald Trump Flies To Middle East To Tell LIV Golf Officials It Has No Future

Donald Trump touched down in the Middle East on Tuesday. As the President makes stops in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to make deals that could restructure the nation and the world as a whole, addressing the status of the professional golf world is also on the agenda, and it's one that LIV Golf officials will likely not appreciate.

We're approaching the two-year anniversary of the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) announcing a framework agreement between the two sides. While various meetings between the two parties have taken place to come up with some sort of plan involving the Tour and Saudi officials getting a seat at the table, most updates on the matter haven't really been updates at all.

In January 2024, the PGA Tour finalized a deal with Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of American billionaires, worth a reported $3 billion. The move was a head-scratcher given the Tour's active and public negotiations with the Saudis, the sole funder of LIV Golf.

Things have long been relatively quiet on the negotiations front, but they went completely silent after Trump held a meeting with PGA Tour and Saudi PIF officials in February 2025, just weeks after he retook office.

With every sign imaginable pointing to the Tour, the Saudis, and the Department of Justice being at a complete stalemate, the President is reportedly laying down the law as to what professional golf will look like in the near future, and it's a future that will not include LIV Golf.

"As the mandarins in Ponte Vedra understand things, the president is going to Saudi Arabia to tell its autocratic leader, Mohammed bin Salman, that any deal between the Tour and the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund will be on the Tour’s preferred terms, and those terms will not include a long-term future for LIV," Golfweek's Eamon Lynch reported on Tuesday.

"If Trump actually delivers the message he has promised, the Saudis have a call to make. Consent to terms that would ultimately mean LIV’s demise (no matter how it’s dressed up in public), or balk and face the prospect of continuing to fund a worthless enterprise as both sides proceed on their separate pathways," Lynch later continued.

Donald Trump is reportedly set to tell LIV Golf that is has no real future. (Photo by Robert Perry/Getty Images)

While there are an endless number of wrinkles in this situation involving the PGA Tour, LIV Golf, governments from different continents, and professional golf as a whole, one of the largest involves President Trump's own ties to LIV.

The Saudi-backed circuit has contested a handful of events on Trump-owned golf courses around the world over the years. LIV hosted an event at Trump National in early April no less.

The President is a businessman who, when he sees an opportunity to make money and have his name thrust into the spotlight even more so, he takes it, hence the LIV events on his properties.

Trump telling Saudi officials that LIV Golf has no real future erases those opportunities. Perhaps this is the sure-tell sign that the President's meeting with LIV and PGA Tour officials in February went very poorly, and Trump is not one to take what could be perceived as a loss very lightly.

It's fascinating, but like anything involving the U.S. government, this process will continue to take its sweet time to unfold.