Trump National to Host 2023 LIV Championship

The 2023 LIV team championship has been moved to Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami and will be played October 20-22, moving from its originally scheduled host of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The Blue Monster at Doral will stage the seeded three-day tournament featuring both match play and stroke play to determine the season’s team champion. LIV Golf Jeddah, previously scheduled for November 3–5, will take place October 13–15 at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club in Saudi Arabia as the 13th and final tournament of the regular season.

“We’re thrilled to return to the Blue Monster at Doral to celebrate a historic year and crown the 2023 LIV Golf League team champion,” said LIV Golf Chief Executive Officer and Commissioner Greg Norman. “The team concept has come to life this year in exciting new ways as our players and fans embrace the launch of team golf. We’re building up for an action-packed weekend with headline entertainment that will put an exclamation point on another can’t-miss LIV Golf event.”

At the conclusion of the regular season, the player at the top of the individual standings is named the individual champion and the top three players receive bonuses. Final team standings following LIV Golf Jeddah will determine seeds for the team championship, with the top four teams receiving first-round byes. Points are awarded at each regular-season tournament to teams finishing in the top eight positions, with 32 points awarded to the winning team down to one point for the eighth-place finish.

Massive Merger Announced

The PGA Tour, LIV Golf and European Tours announced on June 6 in a massive move that a merger has been agreed to, creating a commercial operation designed to unify professional golf around the world and dropping all lawsuits the sides had against each other effective immediately.

The agreement combines the Public Investment Fund’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights — including LIV Golf — with those of the PGA and European tours. The new entity has not been named.

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will join the board of the PGA Tour, which continues to operate its tournaments. Al-Rumayyan will be chairman of the new commercial group, with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan as the chief executive officer and the PGA Tour having a majority stake in the new venture. The PIF will invest in the commercial venture.

“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” said Monahan. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV – including the team golf concept – to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans. Going forward, fans can be confident that we will, collectively, deliver on the promise we’ve always made – to promote competition of the best in professional golf and that we are committed to securing and driving the game’s future.”

Still to be determined is how players like Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, who defected to Saudi-funded LIV Golf for nine-figure bonuses, can rejoin the PGA Tour. Also unclear was what form the LIV Golf League would take in 2024. Along the way, PGA Tour raised prize money at elite events to $20 million, the same purse for LIV’s individual competition. The 2024 schedule has been reshaped for roughly 16 tournaments like that.

LIV Golf was started last year and has been financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) with two-time British Open champion Greg Norman serving as the public face of the organization. The name LIV refers to the number of holes (54) to be played at LIV events.
While the league signed up a number of big-name players, most of its news in the U.S. had been made off the course. LIV sued the PGA Tour in federal court last year, allegin the PGA Tour had used its monopoly power to squash competition and influence others from working with LIV Golf. The PGA Tour filed a countersuit, alleging LIV interfered with its contracts with players.

LIV Golf’s 14-event schedule for 2023 included eight tournaments to be played in the United States.

After kicking off the season at Mayakoba’s El Camaleón Golf Course in Mexico (February 24–26), LIV moved to The Gallery Golf Club in Tucson, Arizona, March 17–19 and then onto Orange County National in Orlando from March 31–April 2. LIV returned recently to the U.S. with events at Cedar Ridge Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 12–14 and Trump National Washington D.C. on May 26–28.

The LIV tour schedule includes summer stops in Europe before returning to the United States for its home stretch. The Old White at The Greenbrier in West Virginia hosts from August 4–6, then Trump National Bedminster in New Jersey takes center stage August 11–13. The final two U.S. events in 2023 were scheduled to take place at Rich Harvest Farms in Chicago on September 22–24, and Trump National Doral in Miami October 20–22 before news that the team championship moved from Saudi Arabia to Florida.

“Today is a very exciting day for this special game and the people it touches around the world,” said Al-Rumayyan. “We are proud to partner with the PGA Tour to leverage PIF’s unparalleled success and track record of unlocking value and bringing innovation and global best practices to business and sectors worldwide. We are committed to unifying, promoting and growing the game of golf around the world and offering the highest-quality product to the many millions of long-time fans globally, while cultivating new fans.”