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      Cameron Smith, Winner of This Year’s British Open, Joins LIV Golf

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      Smith’s defection had been expected, but Rory McIlroy tried to stave it off back in July.Cameron Smith, the world’s second-ranked golfer and a player whose exceptional final-round putting carried him to this year’s British Open title, will join LIV Golf, the breakaway series financed with money from Saudi Arabia.Smith is expected to play in LIV’s next 54-hole, no-cut tournament, which will begin Friday in Bolton, Mass., west of Boston. Five other players — Anirban Lahiri, Marc Leishman, Joaquin Niemann, Cameron Tringale and Harold Varner III — will also join a LIV field for the first time, the series announced on Tuesday.The moves by the players were widely expected but still bruised the PGA Tour, which has spent months trying to devise ways to keep players in its establishment fold. Last week, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, announced changes, including purses averaging $20 million at a dozen events next season, that executives hoped would better position the tour to compete with the allure of LIV, which has enticed players with more relaxed schedules and, in some instances, contracts reportedly worth at least $100 million.Smith, a 29-year-old from Australia who also won this year’s Players Championship, was a leading target for the series, which is underwritten by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The possibility of a Smith defection was such an open secret that a reporter asked Smith about it soon after he won the Open, where he shot an eight-under-par 64 on a Sunday to rally from a four-stroke deficit.“I just won the British Open, and you’re asking about that?” Smith said at a news conference then. “I think that’s pretty not that good.”A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesA new series. More

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      At Chaotic Season’s Close, PGA Tour Banks on Patience and Its Stars

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      At the Tour Championship in Atlanta, the PGA Tour has rolled out a more muscular rebuttal to LIV Golf. The exodus may continue anyway.ATLANTA — The conversation happened two days after Cameron Smith charged into Rory McIlroy’s lengthening catalog of letdowns.First, McIlroy recounted this week, he wanted to congratulate Smith for capturing the claret jug at July’s British Open, ruining McIlroy’s own Sunday on the Old Course at St. Andrews. But with rumors rife that Smith would defect to LIV Golf, the breakaway series financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, McIlroy also wanted to make a case for the PGA Tour to Smith, the world’s second-ranked golfer.“Guys that are thinking one way or another, honestly, I don’t care if they leave or not,” McIlroy said at the Tour Championship in Atlanta. “It’s not going to make a difference to me. But I would at least like people to make a decision that is completely informed and basically know: ‘This is what’s coming down the pipeline. This is what you may be leaving behind.’”Smith may indeed leave the PGA Tour behind: He has not denied a report in The Telegraph, the London newspaper, that he will start playing with LIV as soon as next week in exchange for at least $100 million. The last stretch of the PGA Tour season, though, has shown how, with the sport splitting into bitter camps, certain players have assumed starring roles in the effort to stabilize the establishment ranks.The campaign’s anchors have plainly been Tiger Woods, who went to Delaware last week to meet with players, and McIlroy, who wound up paired with Smith for the first two Tour Championship rounds. But others have lent support; this week in Atlanta, for instance, Jordan Spieth said he intended to be “as useful as I’m wanted and as behind the scenes as I’m wanted.”The top players who are among the tour’s remaining stalwarts — other leading figures like Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson have aligned themselves with LIV — are almost assuredly acting for a complex mix of reasons.There are financial explanations, of course, because a PGA Tour stocked with a greater share of the world’s finest players makes its product far more appealing and far more lucrative, for its organizers and its athletes alike. Some players harbor a measure of disdain for LIV Golf’s patron. And, even by the brooding standards of 2022, it is too cynical to discount players when they complain that LIV’s 54-hole, no-cut events, with shotgun starts, are putting a modern blemish on the ancient game they have spent decades trying to conquer.Whatever the players’ motives, their response is coming into greater focus as the tour moves beyond finger-wagging and suspensions. The blended strategy is unlikely to end the exodus, but it could curb it.The plans emerged alongside the Tour Championship, the finale of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, at Atlanta’s stately East Lake Golf Club, where a 29-man field is driving, chipping and putting in pursuit of the $18 million prize that will go to the winner. (Although the nuances and rigors of the competitions make for an inexact comparisons, Scottie Scheffler, who finished his round on Friday with a two-stroke lead over Xander Schauffele, earned $2.7 million for his April victory in Georgia’s other golf mainstay, the Masters Tournament.)But at the end of a season marked more than any other by such open flashes of betrayal and power, appeals to tradition and the allure of money, the ritual talk of the tour’s future is not automatically a plaudit-laden sideshow. Instead, it has become a showcase for the flotilla of life rafts that the PGA Tour and its allies are deploying.Beyond any peer pressure, there will be an avalanche of cash, with a dozen tour competitions next season designated as “elevated events” that will offer purses averaging $20 million each. Moreover, the tour’s Player Impact Program, which debuted last year and relies on metrics like mentions of a player in the news media and internet searches, will play a far larger role in determining compensation and fortifying tournament fields.McIlroy, left, and Tiger Woods are backing a new “tech-infused” team competition that will feature PGA Tour players beginning in 2024.Paul Childs/ReutersMcIlroy, who was nine shots off the lead and in seventh place on Friday, suggested this week that the new model, which is expected to more or less promise the presence of elite, popular players at a wider range of tournaments, would strengthen the tour by offering clearer assurances of who fans — and sponsors — could expect to see in tee boxes everywhere from Hawaii to Orlando, Fla.“I think if you’re trying to sell a product to TV and to sponsors and to try to get as many eyeballs on professional golf as possible, you need to at least let people know what they’re tuning in for,” said McIlroy, seeming as much a corporate pitchman as a player at some points this week. “When I tune into a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game, I expect to see Tom Brady throw a football. When I tune into a Formula 1 race, I expect to see Lewis Hamilton in a car.”Tour executives are also dangling other rewards, like guaranteed payments to players of $500,000 for a season and a pool of $100 million — up from $50 million — that will be divvied up based on the impact program rankings.And McIlroy and Woods are also backing what Mike McCarley, the chief executive of their shared venture, described as “a tech-infused team competition” that they expect will feature televised Monday night matches, beginning in 2024. McIlroy and Woods both intend to compete in some of the events, which the company said will be played in a custom arena and “combine a data-rich virtual course with a state-of-the-art short game complex.” (Setting aside decorum or any PGA Tour dynamics, it is not hard to imagine why the men did not announce this particular endeavor at the Old Course last month.)The events, McCarley and McIlroy said, will be “complementary” to the PGA Tour and have been in development for about two years. Now they amount to another lifeline.Perhaps it is unsurprising that golf, of all sports, is reinforcing the notion that patience is a virtue, and the possibility of swift forgiveness does not appear to be available for now. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, pointedly said that he would not be instantly willing to welcome defectors back into the fold.“They’ve joined the LIV Golf Series and they’ve made that commitment,” Monahan said. “For most of them, they’ve made multiyear commitments. As I’ve been clear throughout, every player has a choice, and I respect their choice, but they’ve made it. We’ve made ours. We’re going to continue to focus on the things that we control and get stronger and stronger.”Whether that will bear out remains to be seen, and those ambitions could take a quick hit with another wave of defections from players like Smith, who is 13 shots behind Scheffler and tied for 15th in Atlanta.But at least for the moment, some players and some newfound nimbleness have an old order looking a little less bedraggled and besieged. More

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      PGA Stars Seek ‘Some Sort of Unity’ With LIV After Meeting With Tiger Woods

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      Adding to the drama, the LIV golfer Patrick Reed filed a defamation lawsuit against Golf Channel and the commentator Brandel Chamblee, seeking $750 million in damages.PGA Tour stars, including Tiger Woods, met on Tuesday to grapple with the LIV Golf series, which has lured away tour players with staggering sums of money, and emerged feeling positive but unwilling to detail how they planned to fend off the rebel golf start-up or live somewhat peacefully alongside it.The meeting was the latest turn in what has been an uncharacteristically antagonistic year in golf, and it came just a week after a federal judge ruled that the PGA Tour can bar LIV golfers from the FedEx Cup playoffs, which conclude at the end of August.Ahead of the BMW Championship, PGA Tour players on Wednesday were reluctant to share specifics about the meeting, held in Wilmington, Del., that attracted Woods, who flew in from his home in Florida to attend. Rory McIlroy, the world No. 3, described the meeting to reporters on Wednesday as “impactful.”McIlroy said Woods’s leadership at the meeting was crucial as players discussed how to improve the PGA Tour and contend with the rift in the golf world since the emergence of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational series. (The PGA Tour announced in June that it would suspend players who joined the LIV series.)“His role is navigating us to a place where we all think we should be,” McIlroy said of Woods’s presence. “He is the hero that we’ve all looked up to. His voice carries further than anyone else’s in the game of golf.”While players were quick to praise Woods, they demurred when it came to sharing any actionable steps that came from the meeting.“What’s the short-term? What’s the medium-term? What’s the long-term?” McIlroy said. “That’s something that we have to figure out.”Xander Schauffele told reporters on Wednesday that he wanted to see a resolution that ended in “some sort of unity.”“It was a really nice meeting. It was great. It was exciting. It was new. It was fresh,” Schauffele said. “I am very hopeful with what’s to come.”Schauffele, the world No. 6, told reporters there was “a little bit of a code” to keep quiet.“I think I’d be pretty unhappy if I saw one of those guys from last night just blabbering to you guys what we talked about,” Schauffele said. “That would be really frowned upon, and you probably wouldn’t get invited back to the meeting.”Justin Thomas, the world No. 7, said at a news conference that the meeting was “productive” and that the players who attended “just want the best for the tour and want what’s in the best interest.”“I’d just hope for a better product,” Thomas said. “I think that’s the hope in general of anything, is just to try to improve ourselves, where we’re playing, everything the best that we can.”Thomas said that having Woods present gave the meeting added credibility.“I think if someone like him is passionate about it, no offense to all of us, but that’s really all that matters,” Thomas said. “If he’s not behind something, then, one, it’s probably not a good idea in terms of the betterment of the game, but, two, it’s just not going to work. He needs to be behind something.”McIlroy said that in addition to dealing with LIV Golf, the PGA Tour would also eventually have to handle a world without Woods on the tour.“The tour had an easy job for 20 years,” McIlroy said. “They’ve got a bunch of us, and we’re all great players. But we’re not Tiger Woods.”Adding to Tuesday’s drama, Patrick Reed, the winner of the 2018 Masters who joined LIV Golf in June, filed a defamation lawsuit against Golf Channel and the commentator Brandel Chamblee, seeking $750 million in damages.The lawsuit, which was filed in a federal court in Texas, claims that the network and Chamblee have conspired with the PGA Tour to defame LIV players “with the intention to destroy them and their families professionally and personally” and eliminate LIV Golf as a competitor.According to the lawsuit, Golf Channel, Chamblee and the PGA Tour have conspired since Reed was 23, about nine years ago, “to destroy his reputation, create hate, and a hostile work environment for him, and with the intention to discredit his name and accomplishments.”For Chamblee and Golf Channel, “it does not matter how badly they destroy someone’s name and life, so long as they rake in more dollars and profit,” the lawsuit said.Larry Klayman, a lawyer for Reed, said that “we are confident of prevailing in court,” adding that “it’s a very strong complaint.”“While Chamblee’s and NBC’s Golf Channel’s never-ending defamation with regard to Mr. Reed, as set forth in the complaint is not new, with his joining of LIV Golf, it has reached new, intolerable heights,” Klayman said in a statement.Lawyers for Golf Channel and Chamblee could not be reached.The LIV Tour, which is financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, has drawn much attention and criticism in recent months. Among those who have left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf are Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson. Mickelson sparked outrage in February when it was reported that he had said that the LIV series was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” even as he called Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights “horrible.”Mickelson, who is reported to have received as much as $200 million to sign with the breakaway tour, is among 11 golfers who defected from the PGA Tour and then filed an antitrust lawsuit earlier this month against the PGA Tour, seeking to challenge its suspensions and other measures that have been used to discipline players who have joined LIV Golf. More

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      PGA Tour Can Bar LIV Golfers From Playoff, Judge Rules

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      The narrow ruling came less than 48 hours before the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs in Memphis, but the broader turmoil could last for years.A federal judge on Tuesday rebuffed an effort by three LIV Golf players to compete in this week’s FedEx Cup playoffs, giving the PGA Tour interim support as it faces an uprising over the invitational series financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.The decision was an early, if narrowly tailored, victory for the PGA Tour’s efforts to undercut LIV Golf, which has spent recent months draining the more established tour of some of the star power it relies on to draw fans, television money and sponsorships.Although 11 players, including the major champions Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, sued the Tour last week over its decision to bar them from its competitions, only three — Talor Gooch, Matt Jones and Hudson Swafford — asked Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order that they be allowed to compete in the playoffs, which will begin on Thursday at T.P.C. Southwind in Memphis.Judge Freeman, near the end of a Tuesday afternoon hearing in San Jose, Calif., said that she did not believe the players would suffer “irreparable harm” if they were not allowed to play, a vital legal standard to secure a temporary restraining order.The players’ guaranteed-pay contracts with LIV Golf, she said, made it likely that they would “be earning more than they have made and could reasonably have expected to make in a reasonable period of time” with the PGA Tour.Moreover, she said, the arrangements between LIV Golf and the players had been negotiated with the potential loss of PGA Tour compensation in mind.Gooch, Jones and Swafford have combined for more than $37 million in career earnings, according to PGA Tour data.But the players, in a court filing last week and in San Jose on Tuesday, argued that the PGA Tour had defied its internal rules to exclude them from an event that leads to one of golf’s most lucrative paydays. The playoffs, scheduled to conclude late this month, can also clear the way for a player’s participation in men’s golf’s major tournaments: the British Open, the Masters Tournament, the U.S. Open and the P.G.A. Championship.“Large bonuses, big purses, substantial retirement plan payments, sponsorship, branding, and important business opportunities are at stake,” lawyers for the players wrote in a motion. The PGA Tour’s suite of tactics against LIV Golf and its players, they asserted, “are obviously anticompetitive, as they serve no purpose but to thwart competition and maintain its monopsony.”The PGA Tour, in a filing on Monday that condemned LIV as “a strategy by the Saudi government to use sports in an effort to improve its reputation for human rights abuses and other atrocities,” insisted that “antitrust laws do not allow plaintiffs to have their cake and eat it too.”LIV golfers, the filing suggested, could not expect to cycle between LIV events and PGA Tour competitions and break “contracts without consequence.”Besides, PGA Tour officials asserted, the players waited until the playoffs’ start was imminent to bring a legal challenge, effectively conjuring an emergency for Judge Freeman to consider.“Their ineligibility for Tour events was foreseeable when they accepted millions from LIV to breach their agreements with the Tour, and they knew for a fact that they were suspended on June 9,” the PGA Tour wrote, adding that other players who qualified for the playoffs and joined the lawsuit had not challenged their exclusions. (A lawyer for the players, Robert C. Walters, told Judge Freeman on Tuesday that the nature of the suspensions became clear only last week.)Tuesday’s ruling was an early one in the turmoil that could shadow golf for years, in part because the litigation could prove protracted. Away from the courthouse, LIV has announced plans to expand to 14 events in 2023, up from eight this year. It has also said it will offer $405 million in purses next year, compared with $255 million this year, for events expected to include such players as Dustin Johnson, Sergio García and Brooks Koepka.The players suing the PGA Tour include Phil Mickelson, who played last month in the LIV event at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, a New Jersey course owned by former President Donald J. Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe PGA Tour, determined to preserve its standing as the pre-eminent circuit for professional male golfers, has suspended defectors, and some organizers of the major tournaments have signaled that they could try to keep LIV players out of their 2023 fields. The PGA Tour’s efforts have led to scrutiny: The Justice Department has been exploring whether the strategies ran afoul of federal antitrust laws, a particularly sensitive subject for professional and collegiate sports organizers in the United States.Even as LIV has attracted some of golf’s best-known figures, the PGA Tour has maintained a reservoir of support among elite players. Tiger Woods criticized LIV on the eve of last month’s British Open, where organizers made plain that Greg Norman, the LIV chief executive and a two-time Open champion, was unwelcome. Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas, who have a combined six major titles, have also been among the most forceful Tour loyalists.Norman told Fox News Channel this summer that LIV had offered Woods “in the neighborhood” of $700 million to $800 million if he joined the series.Gooch, Jones and Swafford command far less attention. Gooch, ranked 20th in the playoff standings, finished in a tie for 34th at the British Open in July, but his career-best showing in a major was a tie for 14th.This year’s Masters marked the first time Swafford, 67th in the playoff standings, survived the cut at a major. Jones, 65th in the playoff rankings, missed weekend play at the only major he contested in 2022, the P.G.A. Championship.The men have not qualified for next year’s majors. When the players asked Judge Freeman to intervene, their lawyers said that keeping them from the playoffs would likely doom their chances of competing in those tournaments, starting with the Masters in April.In a statement on Tuesday, LIV Golf said it was “disappointed” by the judge’s ruling.“No one gains by banning golfers from playing,” the statement said. More

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      Mickelson and Other LIV Golfers File Antitrust Suit Against PGA Tour

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      A complaint filed on behalf of 11 players pushed back against the punishments imposed by the PGA Tour for players who participate in events sponsored by the upstart LIV series.Eleven golfers affiliated with the breakaway LIV Golf series have filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour, challenging its suspensions and other restrictive measures used to punish those who signed on to play in the Saudi-backed LIV events.The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that the PGA Tour is unfairly controlling players with anticompetitive restraints to protect its longstanding monopoly on professional golf.The complaint — filed on behalf of Phil Mickelson and others — alleges that the tour had “ventured to harm” their careers and livelihoods. “The Tour’s unlawful strategy has been both harmful to the players and successful in threatening LIV Golf’s otherwise-promising launch,” it said.The players Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford and Matt Jones also sought an order to allow them to participate in the FedEx Cup playoffs, the PGA Tour’s season-ending championship events. “The punishment that would accrue to these players from not being able to play in the FedEx Cup Playoffs is substantial and irreparable, and a temporary restraining order is needed to prevent the irreparable harm that would ensue were they not to be able to participate,” the complaint said.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      LIV Golfers, Paid Upfront, Giggle Their Way Around Trump Bedminster

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      Henrik Stenson won the third event on the LIV Golf tour, where nine-figure signing bonuses for top players guaranteed a carefree vibe.BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Brooks Koepka, the four-time major golf champion, was riding in a golf cart Saturday with his wife, Jena Sims, sitting on his lap, both laughing as the cart headed for the golf course.It was a nice snapshot of summer in New Jersey.But what set this scene apart was the fact that Koepka was roughly two minutes away from teeing off in the second round of the LIV Golf event at Trump Bedminster Golf Club. Typically, the buildup to the first shot at a professional golf tournament is tense, anxious and pressure-filled. After all, a seven-figure payday is on the line.The lighthearted Koepka-Sims cart ride, while harmless fun, underscored the impact of guaranteed nine-figure contracts earned by top players on the upstart, Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour. Koepka reportedly received more than $100 million to join the breakaway circuit.No wonder he and his wife were giggling.Patrick Reed teed off on the first hole on Saturday.As LIV Golf completed its third event this year on Sunday, there was an unmistakable carefree air to the undertaking, a sense that everybody had already gotten their money. That’s because dozens had, and even the player who finished last was assured a $120,000 payout (with the travel and lodging expenses for top players reimbursed).Henrik Stenson won the tournament and earned $4 million.Still, for all the focus on the sumptuous prize money, the LIV Golf experience has been illuminating and edifying for professional golf in other less avaricious ways. The vibe from Friday to Sunday in northwestern New Jersey was decidedly younger, less stuffy and clearly more open to experimentation than on the established PGA Tour. That meant blaring high-energy music even as golfers tried to execute devilish putts or challenging chips. The Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” serenaded Dustin Johnson ($125 million upfront payment) at a high volume as he teed off on the first tee Sunday.His shot landed in a bunker.But many fans felt energized in the environment.“You go to a traditional golf tournament and they’re constantly telling you to shut up,” Patrick Shields, who lives in Hackensack, N.J., said next to the 16th tee. “It is a sporting event, right?”Golf carts filled with players, caddies and family members headed to each of the 18 tees for a shotgun start on Saturday.LIV Golf on-course volunteers, however, did carry crowd control placards meant to quiet fans, as is customary on the PGA Tour, too. The placards, held overhead, read, “Zip it,” or “Shhhh.”Although, just as relevant, the volunteers never had to deal with sizable crowds. The attendance for Sunday’s final round was substantially improved from the meager gatherings that turned out for the first two rounds — often there had been only about 30 people surrounding a green — but the total number of fans on the grounds Sunday was no more than several thousand.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      At a LIV Golf Event, Thin Crowds and a Tense Start

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      BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Standing over his ball on Friday, Phil Mickelson, the prized acquisition of the new, Saudi-backed LIV Golf series, lined up his opening tee shot in the breakaway circuit’s event at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.Just as Mickelson, who reportedly received an upfront $200 million signing bonus to join the insurgent tour, was set to begin his swing, a fan 15 yards to his right yelled: “Do it for the Saudi royal family!”Mickelson backed away from the shot as a security official approached the fan and told him he would be removed from the grounds if there was another outburst.Appearing unnerved, Mickelson returned to his stance and finally struck the ball, which sailed 60 feet off-line and landed in a cavernous bunker. Stomping off the tee and muttering to his caddie, Mickelson would begin his day with a bogey.The dominant LIV Golf slogan, barked in radio advertisements and posted on mammoth billboards in neon letters around the Trump course is “Golf, but louder.”Pat Perez, in black shirt, talked with Patrick Reed before the players teed off at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey.It’s not likely that the Mickelson episode, which occurred seconds into the first LIV Golf event held in the Northeast, is what the organizers had in mind.For most of Friday’s first round it was anything but loud. Yes, there was plenty of music played around the grounds, from powerful speakers near greens and tee boxes. But thunderous cheering, the typical soundtrack of most professional golf tournaments, was nonexistent.The crowds at the event, LIV Golf’s third tournament, were too sparse to hear any ovations wafting around the course. That may have been because it was a Friday rather than a weekend, but as an example, the largest first-tee crowd of the day was unquestionably for Mickelson, and it was about 350 people.And Mickelson was hitting next to a large clubhouse balcony and patio. When he reached his first green, there were exactly 43 people waiting for him. While he played the 18th hole, a large luxury box overlooking the green was empty. Several thousand spectators were spaced around the course, but nowhere near the roughly 20,000 that might attend an average PGA Tour event. LIV Golf officials did not announce an attendance figure.As the day wore on, certain greens were partially enveloped by fans standing two deep, but that was a rarity. For many attendees, however, this was not necessarily a bad thing.Paul Casey on the 10th tee. Smaller crowds meant fans could easily get close to the players.Denny McCarthy, 29, of Kearny, N.J., was delighted with his unobstructed view of the 18th green. He planned to stay in the same spot for most of the day and watch each of the 18 groups of three players as they played the hole.“There’s a beer stand behind me and the line’s not long either,” McCarthy said.There were other noticeable ways in which the atmosphere was different than one at a PGA Tour event. For one, the players appeared much more relaxed. In interviews, LIV Golf players have talked about how the new circuit has worked to foster a collective spirit with extravagant pretournament parties at nightclubs and abundant reimbursement of travel expenses for players’ families and caddies.Moreover, because of the controversies swirling around the circuit — including its financing by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and the disquiet that it will forever splinter a revered golf ecosystem — the LIV golfers have felt ostracized. That has bred an us-against-them mentality that was evident on Friday. As the players walked the fairways, there was much more casual conversation among their groups than is customary at a PGA Tour event.Former President Donald J. Trump, whose club hosted the event, waved to supporters.The team competition element may be a factor. At each LIV event, 12 four-man teams play for a prize of $3 million that the winner splits evenly, supplementing the golfers’ individual earnings.“It feels very similar to playing college golf,” said Sam Horsfield, who, at 25, is one of the youngest players in the field. “You’re out there grinding on every shot to try and do well for the boys.”But in the end, there is an overriding reason that the LIV golfers may feel more at ease, and more collaborative: Each player, in a sense, is guaranteed to be a winner. Unlike PGA Tour events, which send half the field home without a dollar, LIV Golf events have guaranteed payments. Even the last-place finisher will receive $120,000 for his three days of competition.Those payouts have been made possible by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which has led critics to accuse the players of selling out to a country that is trying to paper over its poor human rights record. On Friday, a group of family members of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks protested near the course, asserting that Saudi officials had supported the terrorists.But on the course, some fans, especially younger ones, fed off the camaraderie that they observed among the players.“I like what they’re doing on social media, even seeing them enjoy the social events leading up to events,” said Jon Monteiro, 30, who traveled from his home in Reading, Pa., to the tournament on Friday. “The players are having more fun, and if they’re having fun I want to go and share in that atmosphere.”The LIV Golf series has added elements not usually seen on the PGA Tour. Among them: these sky divers.Standing next to Monteiro was his friend Alex Kelln, 30, who lives in Rumson, N.J. Speaking of past PGA Tour events he had attended, Kelln said the tour had a somewhat unwelcoming stigma, which he described as, “You stand there and there are quiet signs.”Monteiro interjected: “When we play golf there’s a speaker with music playing, and I feel like that’s how we’ve grown up playing golf.”Neither Monteiro nor Kelln worry about men’s professional golf being fractured by the showdown between the tours.“It’s healthy competition that ultimately will make them both better,” Kelln said.As Monteiro and Kelln spoke, it was 90 minutes before the first shots of the day, before Mickelson’s encounter with a heckler. Before the crowds were thin and scant at many holes.Monteiro conceded it was early in the LIV Golf experiment. He smiled and said, “We’ll see.”Attendees at the “fan village,” where the music was louder than you’d expect at a golf tournament. More

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      9/11 Families Protest at Saudi-Backed LIV Golf Tournament

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      The families are furious that former President Donald J. Trump once blamed Saudi Arabia for the terrorist attacks, but is now allowing his golf course to be used for its LIV Golf event.BEDMINSTER, N.J. — A somber and tearful group of protesters stood between two American flags behind a public library, in stark contrast to the festivities at a golf tournament three miles down the road. They made their statements and promoted their cause, but declined to take the fight to the gates of Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.“We are pleased that people are refocusing attention on this issue,” said Jay Winuk, one of the protest’s organizers. “There is no reason to go over to the scene where yet another atrocity is taking place.”The group, a band of family members of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, spoke vehemently against the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament being held this weekend at the club owned by a former president, Donald J. Trump.The group, 9/11 Justice, seeks to bring Saudi Arabian government officials, whom they assert supported the terrorists, to judgment. They are infuriated that Trump once agreed that the Saudi government was responsible, but has changed his tune, they said, to cash in on Saudi efforts to sanitize the nation’s global image through sports.“How much money does it take to turn your back on your country, on the American people?” said Juliette Scauso, who was 4 years old when her father, the firefighter Dennis Scauso, perished in the attacks.For days, the LIV golfers and Trump have defended their decisions to align with the breakaway tour and accept millions of dollars from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which is overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Critics of the tour say it is another example of the Saudis “sportswashing” atrocities attributed to them — supporting the 9/11 terrorists, killing the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and oppressing women and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.A protester wore a baseball cap in the style of former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign hat.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMichael Jessie, of Plainville, N.Y., was among the protesters objecting to the tournament.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTrump, who as a presidential candidate in 2016 blamed the Saudis for the 9/11 attacks, said on Thursday that “nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately.”On Friday, the protesters had their chance to respond to both Trump and to the golfers. Many accused the golfers of cowardice for proclaiming sympathy with their cause while still accepting LIV Golf’s money.“You are taking a stand that you agree with the actions of Saudi Arabia or, just as bad, that you are so incredibly greedy and callous that you really don’t care about these atrocities,” Scauso said.The organizers came to the protest armed with copies of declassified F.B.I. documents, which they say establish a clear connection between 12 Saudi government officials and the terrorists in the months leading up to the attacks.“It’s simple,” said Tim Frolich, who was in the South Tower on 9/11. “The Saudis did it. They plotted it, they funded it, and now they are trying to distract every one of those things with a golf tournament 50 miles away from ground zero. It’s deplorable.”The group urged golf fans to boycott LIV Golf and asked golfers and anyone doing business with the Saudis, including broadcasters, to reconsider. On Friday morning, at a nearby Marriott serving as headquarters for the tour on its Bedminster stop, members of the group approached David Feherty, the former CBS and NBC golf analyst who has defected to join the tour even though it has no American broadcast television contract yet.Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, asked Feherty if he would listen and perhaps speak to the golfers about the choices they are making.“He was actually really receptive,” Eagleson said. “He was really open to working with us and having a partnership with us, as opposed to being combative. I’m hopeful.”Eagleson spoke with David Feherty, the former CBS and NBC broadcaster who has joined LIV Golf as a commentator.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Eagleson was far less conciliatory about Trump, who he said was more culpable than the golfers, because, as the former commander in chief, he should know better. Eagleson was part of a group that met with Trump at the White House on Sept. 11, 2019. They say Trump urged them to continue their work, which they did with vigor on Friday.Eagleson said Trump’s claim that “nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11” outraged the family members of victims beyond their already simmering anger.“Our loved ones are the heroes,” he said, “and the golfers and the former president are cowards.”As the protesters spoke, several passing cars honked horns in support, but a few drivers yelled out in support of Trump and one yelled at the family members to go home.Winuk, whose brother, Glenn Winuk, a volunteer firefighter, died in the attacks, called the Saudi funds “blood money” and warned that anyone taking it would carry the “stench” of it forever.“LIV Golf?” he said. “For me and so many more of us, it’s more like death golf.”Several members of the group, including former Trump supporters, took turns at the lectern lambasting the Saudis, the golfers and the former president. When asked what else the group had planned, Eagleson broke down while explaining the exhaustion he and others in the organization felt.“I’m tired of fighting,” he said through the tears. More