Big week for LIV: A dedicated U.S. Open berth and Trump taking a hand in negotiations

Posted by author February 8, 2025 Golf

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If you are a player on the LIV golf tour, or you are a fan of the LIV tour, the last seven days were a pretty good week.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bad week for the PGA Tour, but it was a better week for LIV and its golfers.

Start with the announcement from the United States Golf Association that it was adding an exempt category to the U.S. Open specifically for LIV golfers. The U.S. Open is now the first of the four men’s major championships to make a targeted accommodation for golfers on the LIV.

Of course LIV golfers have been in the four majors in the last few years, but not for their play on that tour. Golfers like Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau have made the major fields based on previous exemption and even off the Official World Golf Ranking.

You have to wonder if the USGA has opened up the door for the other three majors — the Masters, the PGA Championship and the British Open — to add LIV exempt categories before 2026.

The new category is actually for a single player who is ranked in the top three of LIV season-long points in 2025 and who is not otherwise eligible for the Open. So it’s just one extra played in the field for 2026, but it is still an important acknowledgment from the USGA of the status of LIV golf.

The second piece of good news for LIV came when it was revealed that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and golfers Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, on the tour’s players advisory council, had met with President Donald Trump. After the meeting, Monahan released a statement saying that Trump had pledged his support in trying to reach a resolution to the split that has ruptured the game over the last three years.

“We are grateful that (Trump’s) leadership has brought us closer to a final deal, paving the way for reunification of the men’s professional game,” a statement from Monahan, Woods and Scott stated.

Now, just what that means is kind of a mystery. Did Trump promise to end whatever investigation the U.S. Department of Justice was doing concerning a possible deal between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian-based Public Investment Fund, the money behind LIV? Did Trump promise to get involved with the negotiations himself, since he is a devoted golfer? And why exactly would Monahan “ask” Trump to get involved now, and not before?

Trump’s relationship with the PGA Tour and LIV has been complicated at best. Trump Doral Resort in Miami once hosted a PGA Tour event, but that tournament ended under then-commissioner Tim Finchem when Cadillac ended its sponsorship. That week was given to a new event in Mexico, and it was known that Trump was not happy.

Since then Trump’s courses in this country have hosted LIV events on and off, including an event at Doral this April just before the Masters.

This is all interesting for LIV because it seems that much of the rancor and the rhetoric against LIV from the PGA Tour side of the split seems to have softened if not completely disappeared in the wake of the Monahan-Trump meeting. Even one of LIV’s harshest critics, analyst Brandel Chamblee of Golf Channel, admits he has changed his tune on the Saudi Arabian-backed league after playing a round of golf with Trump.

So LIV golfers know there will be one more LIV player in the U.S. Open in future years, perhaps the USGA acknowledging that LIV isn’t going away anytime soon. And LIV knows that the PGA Tour commissioner believes a reunification is closer than ever before because President Trump, somewhat of a LIV supporter, is willing to help the process in some way.

All in all, it was a great week for LIV, even if it wasn’t really a horrible week for the PGA Tour.

Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. You can contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on X at @larry_bohannan.