Amateur golfers will line up on Thursday at the Trump National Doral near Miami, having agreed to pay more than $9,000 apiece to play a friendly round alongside some of the world’s top professionals.
Rooms at the resort hotel will fill up with fans as a pro tournament featuring some of the biggest names in the sport gets underway on Friday. The resort’s restaurants and bars will pull in more business, and the Trump name will be beamed around the world on television and the internet.
Behind this surge in business at one of former President Donald J. Trump’s properties is his deal to host tournaments for LIV Golf, the upstart league sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
LIV’s eagerness to pay to have Mr. Trump host tournaments at his resorts is just one more example of the ties between the Saudis and the Trump family even as he seeks the presidency again, an arrangement that continues to generate conflicts of a type and scale unique to Mr. Trump.
Players practiced on Wednesday ahead of the opening round of the tournament.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
Mr. Trump spoke recently with Saudi Arabia’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, two people briefed on the discussion said; the Biden administration has been working with Saudi Arabia on a Middle East peace plan. It is not clear what Mr. Trump and the Saudi leader discussed. Officials representing Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
The World of LIV Golf
A guide to the entangled and far-reaching power structure of the Saudi-financed golf tour.
