While it’s yet unclear if a LIV Golf-PGA Tour reunification will actually happen, the Saudi Arabia-funded circuit is certainly getting prominence in spaces that were once opposed to it. Its broadcast deal has gone from YouTube and The CW (with part of tournaments there only shown on an app) to Fox, and President Donald Trump welcomed LIV Golf leaders to a White House meeting with PGA Tour leaders this week.

Moves like that have let to significantly dialed-down criticism from many who once went at the league hard. But veteran Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins is not in that camp. Jenkins absolutely unloaded on LIV, the Saudis, and the chances of a deal here in a column Saturday:

I try not to take serious things so seriously these days — otherwise I’ll stroke — and this @pgatourus.bsky.social “reunification” with @livgolfleague.bsky.social isn’t that serious though the word makes me think Germany-Austria 1938. But here is my column: www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/…

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— Sally Jenkins (@sallyjenx.bsky.social) February 23, 2025 at 9:19 AM

Just the opening two paragraphs of that column are more scathing than most of what mainstream sports media figures have said about LIV Golf in the last few years:

Take your average pigsty, trample it into ooze with the feet of dozens of pork-chasers until it’s such a slimy mire that no clean shoe can gain purchase, wreath it in a clammy fog constituted by the greedy breath of zombie opportunists with dead dull cash-staring eyes, and there you have the “reunification” of golf.

Let’s just say it: The deal the PGA Tour is pursuing with its Saudi rivals is filthy. LIV Golf, the circuit bankrolled by the same Saudis the PGA Tour now courts, is as commercially appealing as a cross between a portable toilet and Putt-Putt. Not even the words “White House meeting” can remove its odor. It’s a flop — and a game-defiling one.

Jenkins’ column is well worth reading in full for the details of her arguments about the personal enrichment Trump is getting from LIV Golf events, the way even he’s said privately he doesn’t like the rival circuit’s product, and the issues with leaders such as Public Investment Fund (the actual provider of LIV’s money) governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan (who is being sued by former Saudi intelligence chief Saad Aljabri, currently hiding in Canada, over alleged involvement with attempts to assassinate Aljabri and seize his children as hostages), and more. And she wraps up by arguing that the PGA Tour should reject a deal and allow LIV to continue to lose money, but if they can’t go that far, they should at least extract some concessions:

No deal can go through without the approval of the PGA Tour policy board. If Woods, McIlroy and their colleagues can’t find the stomach to reject the Saudi money, then they should at least demand huge concessions from all the desperate pork-chasing parties involved in this, including the president. And not just concessions that reward them personally while penalizing the defectors.

Among the concessions should be these: 1) A giant donation to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and 2) Saudi acknowledgment of its role in the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. If the Saudis want to sportswash themselves through the PGA Tour, then make them do some damn laundry.

This perspective from Jenkins certainly isn’t the only one out there. Indeed, some once-strong critics of LIV Golf appear to have resigned themselves to a deal, including Brandel Chamblee of The Golf Channel. But Jenkins is correct that LIV’s actual product is not winning over many at this point, even after its Fox deal, and that the PGA Tour seems to be doing okay without its defectors.

And the rationale behind many of those initial criticisms, especially over the Saudi government’s alleged involvement in the assassination of Khashoggi and the Sept. 11 attack, has not gone away. But much of the criticism over it has, with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan among those who have prominently changed their tune. So it’s notable to see one critic strongly stick to their guns in a media environment that seems to have become much more LIV-friendly. Jenkins isn’t the only one doing so, with Pablo Torre also calling out LIV this week, but it’s a much smaller crowd of people actively going against LIV than what we saw a few years ago.

The LIV conversation also needs to be considered in the context of wider Saudi Arabian influence in sports. Beyond his PIF and LIV roles, Al-Rumayyan is also the chairman of Premier League side Newcastle United, and Saudi Arabia overall is a key part of the salaries of many of the 10 highest-paid athletes in the world. The country has remade the boxing, wrestling, various MMA, and tennis landscapes, and is set to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup. As Jeremy Schaap said on the Awful Announcing Podcast this week, their wider sports role is worth an investigative look. And with all that growing influence, and with a U.S. presidential regime seemingly much more favorable to them, it’s significant to see the Saudis still get this kind of criticism from a prominent veteran columnist like Jenkins.