Golf courses owned by former US President Donald Trump have been left off a preliminary 14-event LIV Golf schedule for 2024, Sports Illustrated reported on Tuesday.
Trump, who will be running for re-election next year, owns layouts used for LIV events this season at suburban Washington and Bedminster, New Jersey, as well as next month’s Team Championship at his Doral course in Miami.
The Saudi-backed upstart series will have hosted five events on Trump layouts in its first two seasons, with Trump himself often appearing in pro-ams at LIV tournaments and staying for the competition.
Many of the events also brought protests from families who lost loved ones in September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks unhappy that some of the world’s top golfers would compete in Saudi-funded events. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
US stars Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed are among those who jumped from the PGA to the upstart series over record $25 million event purses. The PGA Tour banned LIV players from events but stars of the tours have battled at major tournaments since.
Trump has been a vocal supporter of LIV Golf, which in June was announced as part of a framework agreement for a planned merger between its financiers, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour that would end golf’s civil war.
Players who stayed with the PGA were unhappy at the secrecy in talks to make that deal and pushed for Tiger Woods to be added to the PGA Policy Board. That panel now has a majority of players and it must approve any merger deal by the end of the year for it to be approved.
As a result, the PGA and LIV are making separate plans for 2024 campaigns and LIV appears set to book its events opposite bigger PGA events than in past seasons.
According to Sports Illustrated, the 2024 team championship is listed as being only in “South Florida.”
Confirmed 2024 LIV Golf venues, according to the report, are Mexico’s Mayakoba, expected to be the season opener on February 2-4, Spain’s Valderrama and The Greenbrier in West Virginia, where DeChambeau fired a LIV-record 58 to win last month.
Eight LIV Golf events in 2024 would be staged outside US borders, including events in Mexico, Spain, Jeddah, Adelaide, Hong Kong, England, Singapore and South Korea.
US events would include Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Dallas and Oklahoma City plus West Virginia and Florida.
LIV events opposite PGA
LIV would stage more events around major tournaments, according to the preliminary programme, with the Los Angeles event opposite the Memorial hosted by legend Jack Nicklaus next June the week before the US Open at Pinehurst.
LIV’s Oklahoma City event would then be staged the week after the US Open when the PGA plays the Travelers Championship in Connecticut.
Events at Valderrama and England would be played the weeks before and after next year’s British Open at Royal Troon.
The Greenbrier event would be played opposite the PGA Tour’s first playoff event in Memphis.
LIV’s Mayakoba opener would be opposite the PGA’s Pebble Beach tournament.
LIV’s Las Vegas tournament would be opposite the PGA Phoenix Open and the same weekend that the NFL’s Super Bowl will be played in Las Vegas.
The season’s final event would likely be played next September in the week ahead of the Presidents Cup matches in Montreal between US and non-European Internationals squads.
