LIV Golf moves team championship from Saudi Arabia to Donald Trump’s Florida course
LIV Golf has once again moved its season-ending team championship tournament to Trump National Doral Golf Club in Florida.
The league announced on Monday that it was moving its championship event from Saudi Arabia to former President Donald Trump’s course outside of Miami, where it held its inaugural championship. The tournament will be played Oct. 20-22.
The team championship event was initially set for Nov. 3-5 at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. That tournament will now be played Oct. 13-15.
"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," LIV Golf CEO and Hall of Famer Greg Norman said in a statement, via ESPN. "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."
The individual champion will be named after the Jeddah tournament. Talor Gooch holds a seven-point lead over Cam Smith in the standings after last week’s event in London. Brooks Koepka is in third and is 25 points behind Gooch.
Team standings after the Saudi Arabia event will determine seeding for the championship tournament, and the top four teams will receive a first-round bye. 4Aces GC, captained by Dustin Johnson, currently leads the standings with 168 points. Torque GC, captained by Joaquin Niemann, is in second with 129 points, and RangeGoats GC, captained by Bubba Watson, is in third with 127.
LIV Golf will hold a tournament next Aug. 4-6 in West Virginia. There are five tournaments left on the schedule.
It’s unclear what will happen to LIV Golf next season after the surprise announcement that it was partnering with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour following more than a year of heated controversies. The PGA Tour is set to head the new entity, which will be funded largely by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and the Tour will have control over LIV Golf’s future. The partnership announcement has drawn plenty of criticism, and a PGA Tour board member actually resigned Sunday due to the deal. Multiple investigations have been launched, too, and a pair of PGA Tour executives are set to testify in front of a U.S. Senate committee this week.
Trump’s courses have struggled to land major events since his time in office. The PGA of America severed ties with Trump and moved the 2022 PGA Championship away from his Bedminster, New Jersey, course after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The R&A said last month that it wouldn’t host a British Open at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland while he owns it. Trump has long strived to bring the British Open back to Turnberry, which last hosted the tournament in 2009, about five years before he purchased it. Buffalo Bills safety Jordan Poyer even canceled a charity golf event that was set for Trump’s Doral club last month due to backlash he said he received over the location.
