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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

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      LIV Golf Comes to Bedminster, and Trump Plays Host, and 18 Holes

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      The former president’s barge-ahead style and whim for scooping up shots too hard to make wouldn’t fly on the LIV Golf series or the PGA Tour.BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Walking alongside Donald Trump as he plays golf is a lot like watching his presidency: He tells you how well he’s doing, mistakes are disregarded and the one constant is an endless stream of group photos with Trump blithely flashing a toothy grin and a thumbs up.It was as entertaining, revealing and inexplicable as it sounds.On Thursday, Trump was a contestant in the pro-am tournament on the eve of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf event he is hosting this weekend at the lavish golf course he built in northwestern New Jersey. The intent of the outing was to team some celebrities and everyday golfers with the professionals, and Trump was, naturally, in the featured first grouping of the day.While Trump played a plethora of golf rounds as president, other than his guests, few were able to witness his golf game during his four years in the White House. The news media was kept at a removed distance. But on Thursday, nearly 50 media members credentialed for the tournament — as well as some event officials — would accompany Trump on foot for 18 holes.Trump’s golfing party, which included security, drove in a dozen golf carts, generally two to a cart. But there was one cart predominantly occupied by a single person, and it was the only ex-president on the property at the wheel.Trump was grouped with Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau in the pro-am.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFor the pro-am, Trump was grouped with two of the best players to defect to the rival LIV Golf circuit from the PGA Tour: Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, who have won three major championships between them.About 15 minutes late for his 10 a.m. tee time, Trump stepped onto the first tee dressed in a white shirt and black pants and sweating profusely under his signature MAGA hat. He looked pale. To be fair, at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, which has little shade, no one walking the grounds on a humid day with temperatures in the mid-90s was comfortable.Stepping onto the tee, Trump quickly became the focal point of more than a handful of photos. He would organize the lineup of the people in the picture, often giving instructions on who should stand where, like a concierge of photo ops.Finally, it was time to start the round, and Trump’s opening drive bounded into the left rough. But it was a respectable distance from the tee for a 76-year-old, roughly 220 yards.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Hey, LIV Golf. Charles Barkley Is Waiting for Your Call.

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      The TNT basketball analyst has been a loud supporter of the Saudi-backed golf series. On Thursday, he gave Greg Norman, LIV’s chief executive, 24 hours to offer him a job.BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Charles Barkley has a question for people wondering why anyone would associate with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour: Why aren’t they outraged by all the other American companies doing business with the same controversial wealth management fund, which is overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia?“You can’t pick and choose who you want to be mad at,” Barkley said Thursday, noting some of the companies the 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.”At least, that is Barkley’s view and the view pushed by many people working with the new breakaway tour that is causing so much upheaval in golf, sports and U.S.-Saudi relations. For some, the tour is a livelier cash cow offering huge guaranteed sums to entice golfers away from the established PGA Tour. For others, it is a cynical attempt by the Saudi prince to use sports as a way to sanitize his government’s poor global record on human-rights abuses.Barkley, never one to hide from controversy, was right in the middle of it all on Thursday, along with the former President and tournament host, Donald J. Trump.On a steamy day at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, which is hosting the third LIV Golf event starting Friday, Barkley sweated through questions about his potential involvement with the tour and then sweated through 18 holes in the pro-am tournament.For now, Barkley, a former basketball star and widely popular hoops commentator on the TNT sports network, is only a guest of the tournament. He has had informal talks with Greg Norman, the chief executive of the LIV series, about joining as a commentator. But he said no official offer has been made, and he imposed a Friday deadline on the tour to do so.“When I wake up in the morning, if they haven’t said anything, I’m going to say, ‘Guys, I’ll play in your pro-am whenever you want me to, if I’m available. But I’m going to go back to my job.’ I love my job and I don’t think it’s fair for them to keep holding on.”The tour has already lured David Feherty, the former NBC golf analyst, to join its livestream. It does not even have a television contract yet. But Barkley, who has earned broad appeal with his rollicking, unedited, comedic approach to basketball analysis but has also been criticized for sexist jokes about women, would be an enormous boon for the fledgling golf tour.He has three years remaining on his contract with TNT, he said, and it would take an enormous amount of money for him to defect.“I’m probably going to lose all my sponsors and everything, so they would have to make it worth my while,” he said. “But if they don’t, I’m still going to support these guys.”A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Trump Criticizes PGA Tour and Praises Saudis for Backing LIV Golf

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      The former president, who is hosting two LIV Golf events, including one this week at his course in Bedminster, N.J., made the remarks before teeing off in the pro am.BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Donald J. Trump praised the Saudi Arabian backers of a controversial new golf tournament Thursday, calling them his friends, while criticizing the traditional PGA Tour.The former president, wearing a white golf shirt and his signature red baseball cap emblazoned with his familiar campaign slogan, spoke briefly before teeing off in the pro-am segment of the LIV Golf event at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., which he owns.“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.”The LIV Golf series is bankrolled by the sovereign wealth fund, which is overseen by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In 2018, during Trump‘s presidency, American intelligence officials concluded that Prince Mohammed had authorized the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and journalist with the Washington Post. Trump, who criticized the Saudis on the campaign trail before his election in 2016, resisted their conclusions.The Bedminster club had previously been scheduled to host the P.G.A. Championship in 2022, but the P.G.A. of America moved it to Oklahoma after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, saying that holding it at Bedminster would be “detrimental to the P.G.A. of America brand.” (The P.G.A. of America, which is separate from the PGA Tour, later reached a settlement with the Trump Organization.) Since then, Trump has sided with the upstart golf tour.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Why Do LIV Golfers Struggle to Explain Why They Left the PGA Tour?

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      The latest golfers to join the Saudi-backed series were vague and defensive in the face of hard questions about guaranteed money and human-rights issues.BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Last month, Justin Thomas, the world’s seventh-ranked men’s golfer, summed up the feelings of PGA Tour players like himself who have rejected the sumptuous money offers of the rival, Saudi-backed LIV Golf series to remain with the established tour.Thomas just wants his former tour brethren now aligned with LIV Golf to say they jumped for the money. “Like, I personally would gain a lot more respect for that,” Thomas has said. “But the more the players keep talking and saying that this is for the betterment of the game, the more agitated and irritated I get about it.”On Wednesday, Thomas, who made his comments on the “No Laying Up” podcast, would have been repulsed anew by the words of the three latest defectors to the rebel tour who appeared at a news conference for a LIV series event that begins Friday at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey.“No, money was not a factor,” said Charles Howell III, 43, who was once ranked No. 15 worldwide but has slipped to No. 169. Howell insisted instead that he joined the breakaway circuit because golf “can be a force for change and good.”Paul Casey, ranked 31st in the world, also lamented that the focus of the new circuit’s successful recruiting efforts has been the bountiful money paid to jump ship.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Trump Embraces LIV Golf, Backing a New Saudi Strategy

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      After decades of failure and rejection in sports, the former president’s New Jersey course will host a LIV Golf tournament this weekend, but the event is not simply about the golf.Donald J. Trump has long toyed with becoming a sports baron.He tried for years to buy an N.F.L. franchise and was a face of a second-tier football league that collapsed. He backed a would-be rival to Major League Baseball that never materialized and briefly put his name on a race for elite cyclists.Now, after decades of failure and rejection in sports, the former president is embracing an athletic gambit with an urgent craving for credibility: LIV Golf, the invitational series that has upended professional golf and, flush with money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is seen as another Saudi effort to use sports as a reputation sanitizer.Coming as the former president weighs another White House campaign and as diplomats navigate a complex relationship strained by Saudi Arabia’s human rights record — including the 2018 murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a source of international outrage that Trump has repeatedly played down — the Trump family’s choice to welcome LIV Golf to two of its courses this year carries the starkest geopolitical overtones of any of Trump’s sports forays.It could also undermine the get-tough message that many Republicans have sounded on Saudi Arabia, and it is making some of the Trump family’s ties to the kingdom decidedly, and defiantly, public.They roared into view as Trump, who has long been associated with golf and who was critical of Saudi Arabia as a presidential candidate, publicly pressed top athletes to defect from the PGA Tour to the LIV series, which has lured top players with offers of millions of dollars in guaranteed money. They will be displayed again this weekend, when the Saudi-backed series will hold a tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey. And they are expected to surface again in October, when a Trump course near Miami is scheduled to host the final event of the year.LIV Golf’s logo outside the club house at Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, N.J.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOutside the pro shop at Trump National in Doral, Fla., where LIV’s final event of the year will be held.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesLike much in Trump’s orbit, the deepening relationship, which could ultimately pose concerns about conflicts of interest if the former president ever returns to public office, is one of mutual convenience and murky provenance. It is not clear how much the Trump Organization will make from hosting the Saudi-financed events.Beyond any money, though, the company’s portfolio of courses is gaining fresh attention and, crucially to a former president who seeks adulation, a record of hosting some of the world’s finest golfers.And as Trump takes his place, for the moment, as a figure adjacent to big-time sports, the Saudi fund is picking up a former American president’s imprimatur on a strategy that has sometimes been condemned as “sportswashing.”“I think it’s money, it’s greed, it’s power,” said Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, which has raised questions about whether any Saudi officials had a role in the 2001 attacks.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More