When Brandel Chamblee stepped on the course for a round of golf with Donald Trump, his reputation preceded him. “[Trump] said straight away, ‘I know you and I differ on LIV, and we differ on the Saudi involvement of the game,’” Chamblee told VF.

“Differ” was probably putting it mildly.

As a commentator for the Golf Channel, Chamblee has established himself as perhaps the most outspoken critic of LIV Golf, the breakaway tour bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s nearly trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund.

To Chamblee (and many others), LIV’s source of funding made it more than just an upstart league challenging the PGA Tour’s supremacy in the golf world, but rather “a sportswashing operation for a murderous regime guilty of human rights atrocities,” as he described it in a 2022 column. He frequently invoked the Saudi government’s role in the brutal slaying of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, calling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a “murderous despot.” And Chamblee ripped players such as Phil Mickelson for leaving the PGA Tour to secure eyewatering sums with LIV.

Trump, on the other hand, stands as one of LIV’s biggest boosters, with close ties to its Saudi backers. In April, Trump National Doral Miami will play host to a LIV tournament for the fourth consecutive year, while Trump-owned courses in Virginia and New Jersey have also served as venues for LIV events. When leaders for the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced a “framework agreement” in June 2023 to merge the rival tours—as well as the Europe-based DP World Tour—and form a single for-profit entity, Trump hailed it as a “big, beautiful, and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf.”

Chamblee, of course, took a decidedly more negative view of the deal, saying at the time that it was “one of the saddest days in the history of professional golf.” He was also doubtful that the merger would ever come to fruition, predicting that it would be blocked by either antitrust regulators at the Department of Justice or players on the PGA Tour’s policy board.

But near the end of 2023, Chamblee found himself on the course with Trump, who mounted a charm offensive with the leading LIV skeptic.

As they played Trump’s course in West Palm Beach, Florida, Chamblee listened as the then former president took a call from Sean Hannity, touted his poll numbers, and discussed a segment he had just seen on CNN. But throughout the round, Trump consistently returned the conversation to LIV, gradually softening Chamblee’s hardline stance. After they finished, Chamblee walked off the course convinced that an agreement between the tours was a matter of when, not if.

“He changed my view to the extent that I thought an alliance between the two was just inevitable,” Chamblee said.

That sense of inevitability has only grown since Trump’s election, which has improved the outlook for a deal that once drew considerable political scrutiny. After the PGA Tour and PIF announced their intention to merge—while dropping their antitrust lawsuits against one another in the process—Senate Democrats immediately launched investigations, and the Department of Justice said it would review the agreement for potential antitrust violations. With Trump back in office, opposition to the deal appears neutralized. His return to the presidency has also given momentum to what had been slow-moving negotiations between the PGA Tour and PIF.

The two sides were unable to strike a binding agreement by their self-imposed deadline of December 31, 2023, leaving the deal’s future in flux. But Trump has accelerated the talks, hosting a pair of meetings at the White House last month involving PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of PIF and chairman of LIV Golf. Tiger Woods, who remained on the PGA Tour after turning down a reported offer of $700–800 million to join LIV, attended the second meeting and said last month that he believes a deal between the two sides is imminent. Trump, for his part, bragged before the election that he could resolve the schism between the PGA Tour and LIV in the “better part of 15 minutes.” Last month, the president said there is a “very good chance” the two sides will get a deal over the line.