Donald Trump hailed LIV Golf and hopes for the best players in the world to feature on one tour amid stalled merger talks with the PGA Tour.

LIV Golf’s arrival as a rival to the PGA Tour divided golf and sent shockwaves throughout the world of sports. LIV Golf immediately made its presence felt, signing some of the game’s biggest names in an attempt to fracture the PGA Tour’s grip on professional golf.

In June 2023, it was announced that LIV Golf had agreed to merge with the PGA Tour. The merger ensured the pending legal dispute between the tours was to be placed on the back burner to attempt to co-exist as a single entity, with a signed agreement seemingly set to combine the PGA Tour and LIV’s commercial operations and rights into a new company, along with the DP World Tour.

Tense negotiations have been ongoing for some time now, but talks have stalled leaving fans in limbo over the future of golf. However, Trump – a keen golf fan and LIV Golf ally – is confident he could get the two sides to strike an agreement in as little as 15 minutes.

During an appearance on the ‘Let’s Go!’ podcast with Jim Gray and Bill Belichick, Trump said: “Well, I’m going to really 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 – meaning you have many tours, but your primary tour… Because when Scotty wins or when they win on the other tour, we have a lot of… There’s a lot of great players. I mean, beyond great. It’s really top, top players on LIV.

“It would be nice if they could all play together. It’s terrible when somebody’s shut out of a major. It’s terrible. But they’re very happy with Saudi. They’re over there and they’re very happy about it. They really are. It’s amazing.

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Donald Trump is often in attendance at LIV Golf events at his own courses

Donald Trump is often in attendance at LIV Golf events at his own courses ( 

Image:

AFP via Getty Images)

“If you speak to them, they’re happy with their decisions. They made more money than they probably could ever have made. They got checks from, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars. So it’s hard to say, ‘Gee, I’m going to be happy because I can’t play in a certain location.’ That’s not that important.”

The initial deadline to complete the deal was New Year’s Eve of 2023, but the two parties remain in negotiations. Trump hopes the merger will get sorted, adding: “I think it’ll come together. Yeah, I could certainly help, but I could probably get it done. I would say it would take me the better part of 15 minutes to get that deal done.”

Back in 2022, Trump declared LIV Golf “a great thing for Saudi Arabia” while encouraging players to “take the money” and join the controversial series. LIV Golf has also hosted several events at his courses, including at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, where the 78-year-old took part in the pro-am with son Eric and major champions Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau.