Pablo Torre Finds Out - Why Golf Yalta Explains Donald Trump

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

America's golfer-in-chief trades on exclusivity, but he still can't buy a green jacket. Are the Saudis using Donald Trump's obsession to disrupt even more than a super-league? Ahead of the U.S. Open, veteran golf reporter and author Alan Shipnuck takes Pablo behind the Shakespearean curtain.• Read "LIV and Let Die" by Alan Shipnuckhttps://www.simonandschuster.com/books/LIV-and-Let-Die/Alan-Shipnuck/9781668020012 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. You're right. You know, there's been a lot of tension in our sport over the last couple of years. But what we're talking about today is coming together to unify the game of golf. Right after this ad. It's good to see you, man. It's been a long time. It's been a long time. I think of you often, though, which is why... I don't think that's true, but... No, look, look.

when Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia and golf and insane quotes come together, I shine the Allen Shipnuck bat signal into the sky. Because you've written, it's multiple books that have touched on the live golf saga at this point. You are a character in ways that I want to get into in here because it's endlessly funny that your life is absorbed by this to me. I don't know if it feels that way to you, but it's entertaining and disturbing and dark hilarious what your beat has become, Alan. That's a good summary. Yeah, I mean, I went back and looked in 2021, Golf Week did this poll of what were the biggest stories of the year. And number two on the

list was that the USGA mandated the driver length be capped. That was controversy in the golf world. People were up in arms about this. And then Live arrived and we got into the realm of money, power, politics, you know, greed, vengeance, all these Shakespearean themes. and it's been a wild ride. But in the post-Tiger epoch, we kind of, we needed it because golf is inherently boring, and it's been great for the content business. And Tiger Woods will be in this story as well in a little bit here.

But the general thesis is no exaggeration by Alan Shipnuck. Because if you do not give a shit about golf at all, what I can safely assure you is that today's episode does not require you to know anything about what driver length, even is. All I need you to understand is that three years ago, Alan Shipnuck, my old colleague at Sports Illustrated, was writing an unauthorized biography

of one of the greatest and most bombastic American athletes of all time, a golfer named Phil Mickelson. And the key word here is unauthorized, because Alan, in the course of his reporting, managed to pry open this very early window into a new golf super league, created and funded by the Saudi Arabian government called Live. And Liv, for one thing, was about to poach star players from American Gulf's incumbent governing body,

otherwise known as the PGA Tour. And this itself was crazy. But Liv was also doing this on the heels of the 2018 assassination of the Washington Post's Jamal Khashoggi. We return now to a story that has been in the headlines all week, the disappearance of a Saudi Arabian journalist in Istanbul, Turkey. According to reports, it is suspected that he was murdered, literally cut in pieces, and smuggled out of Turkey by Saudi security forces. This goes back really to the mid-2000 and teens

when there was this idea of there was going to be a breakaway league and golf was going to be reshaped. And, you know, one of the problems in golf is that the players love to call themselves, you know, private contractors. They get to pick and choose their tournaments. And does LeBron want to go have to play in Sacramento or Milwaukee in February? He does not, but he still shows up because it's mandated. In golf, it's never been that way.

And so the PGA Tour had, you know, 45 events, and the stars would only play 20 of them, and it was bad for the product. And so there was this notion that we'd create kind of a super league of golf where the players were contractually obligated to show up every time. And that started kicking around in 2017, 2018. The Saudis came on as investors in what was called the Premier Golf League. This was bubbling for literal years, and no one paid too much attention to it. But Phil was at the center of everything, as is his wants.

He was negotiating with the Saudis. He was negotiating with the Premier Golf League. He was negotiating with the PGA tour. I mean, he was like a triple agent, and no one really understood the state of play because it was all happening in the shadows. And the interview that Phil did with me, which dropped in February of 2022, that kind of blew the roof off of the whole thing. The World Golf Hall of Famer told journalist Alan Shipnuck,

the author of an upcoming unauthorized biography of Mickelson, that he would support the new league, even though the Saudis are scary to get involved with. We know they killed Kishoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing this, why would I even consider it? because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA tour operates. I'm not sure I even want it to succeed,

but just the idea of it is allowing us to get things done with the PGA tour. It was raw, and it was honest. It captured the moment where everyone was looking out for their own interest. There was all these secret negotiations going on. And when that came out, the state of play became more obvious, and things started to accelerate and get messier. Phil McElson went on to say another quote. I'll recite this one too.

Alan is the worst liar and a pathetic human. I mean, Phil's been this duplicitous character, his whole career. He's a master, manipulator of the media. His nickname on tour was Fig Jam, which is, fuck I'm good. Just Ask Me. You know, another nickname was genius. Liv has had some impact, even though the PJ Tour will never admit that. So some of the players who went over there can hang their hat on that.

Now, of course, they wouldn't have gone without the money, but that was one of Phil's primary talking points way back when, is that the PGA tour is this huge bloated bureaucracy, and the players who are the product, who are the show, are not getting a big enough slice of the pie. And as soon as Liv arrived, the tour opened the spigot, and the money started flowing to the players, and Phil's been vindicated.

So we're going to get to America's golfer in chief in just a bit here. And Alan Shipnuck, you should know, has interviewed dozens of golfers. that have personally played with and against Donald Trump. But you should recall that before Trump ever got involved, the founding of the Saudi-backed league that we're here talking about today did trigger a cold civil war. Tonight, the PGA tour making a striking announcement,

suspending players competing in the LiveGolf Invitation series. It's been an unfortunate week that was created by some unfortunate decisions. I'm surprised at a lot of these guys, because they say one thing and then they do another. It's pretty duplicitous on their part to say one thing and then do another thing. The players who have chosen to go to live and to play there, I disagree with it. It's fractured the sport in a way that's unimaginable.

Like if the AFC and the NFC never competed against each other, how weird would that be? If half of the stars in the NBA were suddenly playing on the G League, like it just, that's where we are in golf. The top players are split, and we only see them at the major championships four times a year. The sport has suffered. A lot of fans have been turned off by the rhetoric.

And that rhetoric, as levied by the live tour, involved courtrooms and dozens of citations of alleged monopolistic behavior on the part of the PGA, and the players who defected to the Saudi back tour, now having to defend themselves. I don't condone human rights violations at all. Anywhere in the world, you wouldn't play. You flat of Putin had a tournament.

Would you play that? A speculation, not even going to comment on speculation. But today, here in 2025, with the U.S. Open coming up this weekend, the scene is conspicuously different. As we saw earlier this year when the executives in charge of live, and the PGA got back together in the same room at the White House. For close to four hours at the White House, President Donald Trump met with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monaghan,

player directors Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, and public investment fund governor, Yasser Al Ramehan, all to discuss the reunification of the professional game. After Trump gets reelected, you know, six months ago, one of his first acts as president-elect is to bring them together to try and solve this cold war of golf. Trump played golf with Jay Monaghan, and then he had two oval office meetings. And this is all about trying to broker this truce, reunite the golf world, and also get

the Saudi money into the ecosystem professional sports in America. Now, the PGA tour released a statement, thanks to the leadership of President Trump, we have initiated a discussion about the reunification of golf. are committed to moving as quickly as possible and will share additional details as appropriate. I have no doubt that Donald Trump cares more about the state of professional golf and does about Gaza or Ukraine. No question. The amount of space this is taking up in his brain is absolutely frightening. And in terms of that space, this is no exaggeration either. Because the president is not simply obsessed with golf. According to the tracker, did Trumpgolf today.com, Trump has spent an

unprecedented 25.9% of his presidency to date golfing at an estimated cost of $50.4 million to U.S. taxpayers. And I am also further told that Trump has already been making moves to set up his post-presidential golfing interests. But first, you just got to understand what Donald Trump was like before. Before Donald Trump ever thought about getting into politics, he was just a golf course developer. He was just a dude who loved golf. He loved to play with good players. He had an LPGA event at his course in Florida that he presided over.

And everyone in golf knew Donald Trump is just kind of this fun-loving golfy dude. And no one imagined that he would become the President of the United States and that he would get mixed up in all of this. And to understand it, you know, he's an outer borough striver. You know, this is Donnie from Queens. And being accepted by society in New York was one of the driving forces in his life. And golf was part of that. Golf course memberships at a certain station in life are the most coveted thing there is.

Because every rich dude can buy a plane. They can buy a Ferrari. But to get into Augusta National, to get into Pine Valley, to Shinnecock, to Marion, to national golf links, you cannot buy your way in. and Trump could never get into any of those clubs. He was rejected by all of them. And it touched something so deep in his soul that none of us could ever understand. And he built his whole golf course portfolio,

this whole real estate empire through golf just so he could have his own fiefdoms and he could actually have a club to hang out at because he wasn't getting in any of the good ones. He had to create his own. And that is the entry point for Donald Trump into golf. There's an inversion of the Groucho Marx quote, right? I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

It's the exact opposite, exclusivity here, being the defining force, the momentum behind, I mean, not just golf, but I suppose every aspect of the way that our society has been remade in his image. And you have, I think, done as much digging into the question of what's it like to play golf with Donald Trump as I think anybody on the planet. The irritating thing about Donald Trump as a golfer is he's actually pretty good. When you look at his swing, it's so funky, and he's just lunging at the ball and his clubs all over the place. But when he gets down into the impact zone, his technique is beautiful. And it's grading to the rest of us because it's like he should be hitting the ball over the planet, but he does have good hand-eye coordination and he squares the club face and he's actually, you know, a pretty solid golfer. And, you know, Phil Miggelson told me way back when, you know, Trump has clubhead speed and there's no substitute for that.

And when you watch those clips of Joe Biden, there was an absence of clubhead speed. I think that's fair. I think that is objectively fair. That's not a political statement. That's just a fact. Now, did Trump shoot 68 at Bel Air like he's claimed? Has he won all those club championships? We know that's all bullshit.

But he's a solid, you know, I would say seven or eight handicap. And that's legit. I mean, that's probably better than 90% of golfers in America. And he's a showman. You know, I've watched him in pro-ams playing with some of the best players in the world, and the crowd's out there, everyone's screaming his name, and he tends to hit a good shot. When the crowd gets large, I mean, he's got a put that matters.

He tends to make it. He's just good at golf. There is a fig jam dynamic to Trump, much like the man that you quoted. Just then. A fuck I'm good, just ask me. Aspect to his whole, I mean, he might have been the most infamous originator of that philosophy. actually. Trump's driving his golf cart up onto the, the T-boxes and the putting greens. This is important. Donald Trump drives the cart. He always drives the cart. And since you're playing at his courses, he can do whatever the

hell he wants. So he will literally drive right up on a T-boxes, which is very much a no-no for anybody else. He'll drive right to the edge of the greens. He would probably drive through a bunker if he had bigger tires. Like, it's just, he's all over the place. He's got a little bit like Crelladiville out there and then the golf cart. A bit of a metaphor eating itself at this point, you know. Yeah. Trump is enraging many people with his remarks about Mexican immigrants. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime.

They're rapists. And some. I mean, you go back to when Trump first ran for president and his very scathing anti-immigrant comments. And the PGA tour was so unsettled by that. They took away his tournament at Dural. So Trump was, you know, he was ostracized by the PGA tour. By building these courses, you know, we all know Trump needs endless validation.

So it wasn't enough to have these courses and have members join. He wanted big time tournaments. And he really lusted after the so-called major championship, the biggest, most glittering, most prestigious tournaments. And when he, the PGA championship was awarded to Trump bed minister, that was the end of like a 15-year quest, that Trump had tried to charm and schmooze every official at every governing body. and it was a huge deal for him. And after January 6th, in a rare showing a backbone for the golf world, the PGA of America pulled that tournament. In 2020, PGA championship will no longer take place at Trump National in Bedminster.

The PGA says that holding the event there in the aftermath of last week's riot would damage its brand. So Trump lost this crown jewel event that he'd been lusting after for literal decades. Yeah, his club was kicked out of the club. You cannot imagine how much that wounded him. And he bought Turnberry, which is one of the great courses in the world, and it's hosted some tremendous British Open, famously the duel in the sun. Nicholas and Watson in 77 has this rich history.

It's the prettiest of all the open venues right on the ocean. And the Tweety Jents at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews have made it very clear, they will never bring a British Open to Turnberry as long as Trump is alive and can overshadow the event. So now every big tournament that matters has turned its back on Trump. And he's completely on the outs. He's spent, you know, the latter, you know, third of his life trying to ingratiate himself into the rhoda of these big-time tournaments.

And they've all been taken away. But now here comes Live Golf, run by his buddy, Greg Norman, funded by the Saudis with whom he's had business dealings going back to, you know, selling condos at Trump Tower in the 80s. And he bought his first yacht from a Saudi national. So the ultimate compliment that Donald Trump has ever paid anyone was when he said about the Saudis, they pay cash. That's the highest compliment in his universe. So at this point in the story, I do need to jump in here to introduce you to this other genuine golf evangelist,

who is very familiar with both Donald Trump and Alan Shepnuck, the aforementioned Greg Norman, whose nickname when he was a Hall of Fame golfer was The Shark. And the Shark was appointed commissioner and CEO of live. of golf in late 2021, and Liv's very first event was in 2022, in the UK, which was especially memorable, as it turns out, for today's guest. Because Alan Shipnuck had shown up to cover the event, not long after publishing Phil Mickelson's quote about ignoring all that stuff, about executing gay people and bone song journalists, because Saudi Arabia could finally, quote, reshape how the PGA tour operates, end quote. But then, at this grand inaugural,

tournament welcoming the world to this new event, a bunch of security guards from the Live tour, kicked Alan out. I had texted Greg Norman, and I said to him, are you aware that some necklace goons kicked me out of this press conference? And he didn't respond. And so, okay, and I was in a taxi going back to my hotel. My phone started melting because that video had been released. And I honestly had no idea that Norman had been standing there. This video obtained by CNN, show. how LibGolf will be operating their business.

Behind Shipnook, watching all of this go down, that would be the CEO of LibGolv, the shark, Greg Norman. His face is twisted into this scally. He looks like the grim reaper. I mean, that's what makes the picture so funny is just the expression on his face. So good. And I didn't see him.

He was directly behind me. And so that was incredible. And then, like, you couldn't even make this up. Just then he texted me. He says, idea, you know, and I was like, this motherfucker, like, okay. I just, it was so insane. So that's when I screenshot it and I put it on Twitter and then it kind of blew out.

So now Live Golf launches and this is the on ramp that Donald Trump has been waiting for to get back into big time golf. And it's quite convenient because no sort of reputable golf course wants to be associated with live golf in the early years. You know, they're struggling to find venues. So of course, Trump raises his hand. So now you have the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia is now funneling money to a former president of United States to host these golf tournaments.

It's an unprecedented alignment of foreign policy and private business interests. So Trump starts hosting these live events. And there becomes this overlap with the live fans are now. they now have this MAGA element and sort of this anti-establishment, anti-elite. And, you know, it was commonly known as LiveBots, like these noisy accounts on Twitter who are pro-Live. You know, there's now become, they become pro-Trump. It just becomes this nexus of ideology and self-interest. And it's totally fascinating.

Of course, Liv hires Ari Fleischer to help with their PR. former White House under George Bush, yeah, PR guy, basically a flack, now repurposed for this. Yes, but Ari Fleischer was in charge of the White House Communications on 9-11. He was in some ways the face of the American response. Yeah, and for those who didn't read the 9-11 Commission's report, the hundreds of pages that were published, I should say that even though the commission found, quote, no credible evidence of Saudi government complicity, one of the commissioners did go on to say, quote, there was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals

in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government, end quote, which is to say that when, you know, a live golf event backed by Saudi Arabia, shows up at Bedminster, a Trump course in New Jersey, in the shadow, Alan, of New York City and what used to be the Twin Towers, it all felt like a little much

to a bunch of the family members of the people, people who had died in one of America's foremost modern tragedies. Well, yeah, and some of the surviving family members protested outside the gates. You know, they made their presence felt. And I see these golfers dodge questions, put their head in the sand, not want to confront us, not want to address our issues and just say golf is for the greater good or I'm doing this for my family. Well, my dad went to work that day providing for his family and he got blown away.

It's important to understand. The 9-11 commission report only gave three pages to the Saudi question. And its authors basically said, this is too big for us. There are more questions that need to be explored. And we didn't have the resources at the time to do that. So the Saudi Arabian government has always taken the stance that we were exonerated by the 9-11 commission. But that's not true.

The 9-11 commission said there appear to be some links. We have some tangential evidence of individuals, and it's very much hair-splitting to say, they were individuals in the government, but there was no government collusion. It's like, okay, maybe. So it's a very subtle thing. And even more to the point, no less than Jay Monaghan, head of the PTA, made the connection. As it relates to the families of 9-11, I have two families that are close to me, the lost loved ones. And so my heart goes out to them.

And I would ask, you know, any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA tour? You know, if Live Golf was funded by Australian money or English money or some other foreign source, it would not be nearly as controversial. But because it's Saudi. the uneasiness with the power and the tentacles that the Saudi economy has throughout the entire globe that's added a whole element to this look the the notion that the America first party that drapes itself in patriotism whose bots tend to have as their avatar the American flag are aligned allied in business with the Saudi Arabian sovereign investment fund the private wealth fund while Donald Trump himself, just to again just state some of the obvious,

has so many conflicts of interest that is hard to recap here. But it is Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, with more than $2 billion in the private equity firm with Saudi Arabia. It's Saudi-backed real estate investments in Trump organization projects, including a new Trump tower in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. It's also just Trump calling the prime minister of Saudi Arabia, of course, Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, as he's often referred to, quote, a great guy and a friend, despite being also the person,

at the head of the government that Bonesaw a journalist from the Washington Post. So all of it, it's just, it kind of blows your mind when you're forced to put it all down on paper together. MBS is, he's the crown prince. He's not the king of Saudi Arabia. His father's still alive. And of the five previous crown prince, has only one actually ascended to the throne. it's not a sure thing and he could have been replaced

he could have been ousted and he was still kind of early in his reign but Donald Trump helped keep him in power you know he sends a secretary of state over to re-ad for photo ops and to assure the world that the U.S. is still

behind MBS and that's a crucial moment for MBS retaining you know his the throne and you know and Trump says to my Pompeo, the Secretary of State, you know, basically tell me owes us one. And that got cashed in with the investment in Kushner, the investment through Liv Golf. You know, Alanister always pays his

debts. And MBS's favorite TV show is Game of Thrones. And, you know, there was very much like, okay, you save my bacon. How can I help? Another quote, by the way, from Game of Thrones that I want to cite for you, which is that chaos is a ladder. So what you have to understand is the Saudis are always playing the long game here. And the guy who's overseen LiveGolf, who's kind of the patriarch, is one of MBS's closest advisors. His Excellency, Yashir al-Rumayan, it's a great title. And he sees golf as a way to open up Saudi society and to teach people how to come together. And he's a true believer. He's like Norman in that regard. And that's why they're kindred spirits. He was this unknown banker who helped put Muhammad bin Salman in power. You know, there was a so-called

Sheikdown where MBS locked up a lot of the leading members of Saudi society. They had to transfer $100 billion back to the state. And it was all Rumiyan who actually oversaw the transactions. He was like the heavy in all of this. So he's this very shadowy figure that no one knows, but he's probably the most powerful person in the world who's not ahead of state. Because not only does he run the PIF, which has a trillion dollars of assets, he's also the chairman of Aramco, which is the Saudi oil company, the state oil company, that's the most profitable company in the world.

It's the big thing in golf, and we're going to enjoy it. That's why I'm here. I'm going to play the pro-am, and I'm going to have a lot of hopefully fun. But he does have this very pure love of the sport. And in some ways, live golf is like fantasy camp for Yassir.

There's a business that's losing tons of money, but he gets to play in the pro-ams with Phil, with Dustin Johnson, with Brooks Kevka. You've never seen any. anyone happier than you see your Al-Romyan during a live pro-am because he just scoots and he gets a putting lesson from Cam Smith and then he goes up a few holes and he gets a driving lesson from Bryson DeShambo and then he goes and he yucks it up with Dustin and they talk about what they're going to do on the yacht later and he's having the time of his life it's just funny it's just

funny that again multiple things are true there's a yes and dynamic here right all of these people are using golf for self-enrichment but also yes and they fucking love golf. That is not in dispute by anybody. They actually love the sport. And so you have, Yaseer is the patriarch of live golf. And his counterpart, the commissioner of the PGA tour is J. Monaghan. There's a, there's a segment on CNBC in which these two people who were engaged once in litigation against each other, right? Accusations of monopolistic behavior. from live to the PGA, right? Dozens of citations of monopolistic behavior in lawsuits,

they gather on CNBC in between Trump administrations, I believe we are, at this point in the timeline, and what happens there at this scene? It's one of the most shocking moments in the history of professional golf. Just his picture alone is going to surprise a lot of people. Seeing the two of you together smiling, given especially what has been a hostility between Live and the PGA. So let's just start where I think a lot of people have a question is how in the world did this come about? We're now about 10 months into the Live Golf era.

You know, it's launched in the summer of 22. And as you note, the PJ Tour and Liv are suing each other. The Justice Department is snooping around. The press conference barbs and bitchiness is, at an unprecedented level for the gentleman's game. You know, this quiet, boutique little sport that no one's ever really cared about is on the front page of the Wall Street Journal,

the New York Times, and, you know, the tour is burning up $10 million a month and legal fees trying to defend all these things. It's just they're on this path to mutually assured destruction because both tours are losing so much money at this point. And Jay and Yassir pop on CNBC with no warning to anybody, including all the top players who have put their, they're next in the guillotine to try and defend the tour, to try and justify live.

And they go on and they announce that there's peace in our time, and the lawsuits are over, and we're all friends. Well, listen, I think today is a, it's a historical day for the PGA tour and the game of golf, and it's a historical day for the PIF and the DP World Tour. And you're right. You know, there's been a lot of tension in our sport over the last couple of years. But what we're talking about today is coming together to unify the game of golf. We've recognized that together we can have a far greater impact on this game than we can working apart.

And I give Yasser great credit for coming to the table, coming to discussions with an open heart and an open mind. We did the same. And the game of golf is better for what we've done here today. It was very unsteadying, very unsettling. Like, what have we been fighting for? You know, the Roy McElroy's of the world had made this intensely personal, and they felt like they were defending the honor of the PGA tour and the stars and stripes. And now it's all of a sudden, you know, money wins.

We're all pals. It's going to be okay. And it was just an all-time thunderbolt. And what happens next in 2023, despite lives many pre-existing allegations of monopolistic behavior on the part of the PGA, is a shocking announcement for anybody who remembers the birth of this whole thing. It is the announcement of a merger. An announcement, by the way, that the now former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lena Khan, did find eyebrow raising, for the record. As she recently told me in an interview for Pablo Torre finds out,

the irony is not lost on anybody who is familiar with the thesis of LiveGolf in the first place. in which the PGA was acting monopolistically, but now a merger between the two feels almost farcical. Isn't that even a bigger monopoly? So this is something that I believe the Justice Department's anti-trust division was looking into, and I remember when it was proposed,

there was a lot of concern about how this would, you know, affect things. And I think just more generally, there's been a disturbing set of signs suggesting that some of these decisions may not be made, on bases of the law and the facts, but instead based on the whims of the White House, and I think that's pretty troubling.

But this merger, you should know, has not happened yet, although the clock continues to tick. There's just been this protracted negotiations, there's a lot of stagecraft, and that's why Trump's involvement has been consequential because we know he'll make the Justice Department go away. last thing Donald Trump's going to do is sick the Justice Department on his friends in the

golf world. All of which takes us to another conspicuous confusion in the present day and yet another bet that American sports are making on Saudi Arabia's public investment fund and vice versa. One of the pieces that moved on the chess board in these protracted negotiations is the PGA Tour took $1.5 billion from the strategic sports group, which was this hastily assembled kind of investment group of some bold-faced American sports franchise owners, notably John Henry of the Red Sox and others. And that was a way for the tour to get the money it needed because to keep the top players from abandoning the PGA tour, they had to jack purse his way up, they had to create all these incentives. And Monaghan was writing checks. He couldn't cash.

Bringing in this private equity money was crucial to keep the lights on if the things, if they don't consummate the deal with the PIF and Yasser and Saudi Arabia. But what is in it for John Henry? Because no one understands how they're going to get this money back. Well, the PJ Tour has been a test balloon for the Saudis. Can they come into the American sports landscape? Because, you know, they bought Newcastle United, a big football team in Europe. They've hosted F1.

They've hosted tennis. all kinds of other events. Oh, and there are rumors of like basketball leagues, independent, I mean, just like competitors to the NBA, live golf versions of every sport has been basically bandied about at this point. But if this deal can get consummated and Jaseer comes in basically as a partner

next to John Henry in the PGA tour, now they have this strategic alignment, now they have this kinship, now they have this business relationship. And so the next time the Dallas Cowboys would go up sale or some other blue chip franchise, maybe John Henry is the face of the buying group, but maybe you see it's putting in all the money. And that becomes a way to change this whole sports landscape. And so there's so much going on here beneath the surface. And some of its

conjecture, you know, informed conjecture, but there's just a lot of pieces here that transcend this little tiny boutique sport of golf that no one really cares about. And one of the most delicious things that came out. You know, there was these Senate hearings. Today's hearing is about much more than the game of golf. It's about how a brutal, repressive regime can by influence, indeed, even take over a cherished American institution to cleanse. So these hearings on Capitol Hill were overseen by, you know, Senator Richard Blumenthal

of Connecticut. And it was to examine the issue of sports washing. and to shine a light on what is Saudi Arabia trying to accomplish here, and what does it mean for this proud institution of the PGA Tour that has given over a billion dollars of charitable money back into communities? It's a very fraught question. Athletes like the PGA Tour golf players are role models. They are ambassadors of our values,

and the institutions that concern us today are vital to our. national interest. And in these documents, Yassir had basically hired some American consultants to game plan this whole thing. And one of the things that they speculate on was that Yashir could become a member

of Augusta National. He could get a green jacket. And he could get a membership to the RNA. And again, like we were talking about with Trump, you can have all the money in the world, you can have the biggest boats and the biggest planes like the Saudis do, but you're never going to get into Augusta National. you're never going to get into the RNA because those those are the gatekeepers of the Western world.

But if you can ingratiate yourself at the highest levels of the sport, then maybe the doors to Augustus swing open. And it was in the black and white of this agate of these Senate documents. Like it was kind of the ultimate end game. Like why has the Piff poured $5 billion into live golf with no hopes of ever getting it back? It is a sinkhole of money. But, you know, it's like the hot dogs at Costco. It's a loss leader. Like, if they can create these relationships, if they can go to the masters and be in the rooms,

you can get a lot more than $5 billion of business. There is the notion of when you are the most powerful people in the world, when you are rich and your control of state governments, what can you not just buy? It turns out that the answer is entree into the most exclusive literal clubs in the world. It's a green jacket. That is the ultimate status symbol for the ruling class. More than anything, everyone's got a plane, everyone's got a boat, everyone has a trophy wife, who cares? It's the green jacket.

That is it. And now, as you compare this to the hot dogs at Costco, thanks to your reporting, thanks to our just obsession with this story, we have a clear sense of, yes, how the sausage gets made. And it turns out that the ingredients in there are pretty f***. up. It's almost too much to process, but you lay it out and it's hard to deny that what I'm finding out today is that this is very complicated and yet extraordinarily stupidly simple. Yeah, that's well said. And, you know, sports washing is hung over this whole live golf enterprise from the beginning. But as an illustration of how effective sports washing can be, in 2022, when When Liv kicked off in the summer, every press conference,

the players were pummeled with questions about the Saudi money, about Jamal Khashoggi, about MBS, about the 9-11 family. And it was this drumbeat at every tournament. And now it's completely exited the discourse. It's never mentioned. It's never thought about. It's never written about. I haven't heard a question like that in two years at a live event.

That's what's insidious about sports washing is that it works. At some level, you just accept. like, hey, these guys are part of the ecosystem now. We're enjoying the spoils. And so it just is what it is. And that's why people get into sports washing. You go back to the Berlin Olympics and Jesse Owens, you can, you know, when Russia hosted the Olympics while they're invading Crimea, you know, while China hosted the Olympics and they're building actual concentration camps. Like sports washing has been part of the playbook forever. Sports washing works. It's a sad fact of modern life. And we've seen that with just the discourse around live.

What do the players want in this at this point, Alan, to ask about them now towards the end here? Like, how do they factor into any of this? Well, they're definitely pawns on this larger chessboard. But, you know, they have a voice. And it's revealed people's values for better and for worse. And so for Rory, it was loyalty. For Tiger, it was money and power. because, you know, Liv gave him a purpose after his car crash, you know, kind of took golf away.

And to rally the troops and to preserve his legacy on the PGA tour, but to be the guy who's calling all the shots, which he's been doing behind the scenes. That's been deeply gratifying to him. Well, he was there, right? Well, Tiger was, you know, when you talk about Yassir and Jay from Live in the PGA gathering at the White House, as Trump is brokering, you know, Gulf Yalta. Tigers, Tigers right there, isn't he? Isn't Tiger on the grounds as well? He is, because Tiger has seized control of the board of directors of the PGA tour, and he's more important than Monaghan at this point for getting a deal done,

so he has to be there. But let me ask you, is there anybody like our tiger? How are you? Would you want to just say a couple of words, Tiger? He doesn't. He's much more comfortable. Tiger. Sayah!

Hey, it's an honor to be here. It's an honor to be here with you, Mr. President, and to be honored here with all of you. Thank you so much. But, you know, the players who went to live, some of them may have been pure of heart and felt like this is a chance to modernize a sport. It's certainly, you know,

there's a lot of jokes about the live tournaments with the shotgun starts and the music in the background and their 54 holes instead of 72, but there's no doubt they're attracting a younger Democrat. graphic and that's needed for golf to sustain itself. You might even call it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA tour operates. Yeah, you could. So, Liv got some things right, you know, as we were talking about at the top, all the top players,

every player on Liv has to play in every tournament. So when you go to, you know, Live Virginia, which is happening, you know, here in June, and I'm sure the president will make a cameo there, you know you're going to get Phil and Dustin and Brooks and Bryson. And the PJ Tour has reshaped its model to kind of follow suit. They have these so-called signature events now where the top players gather. It's a lot more money. It's a smaller field.

There's no cut. They've kind of stolen some of the live ideas. So, you know, the live proponents would say we've helped push golf forward. And there's some truth to that. The live streaming choices are vastly superior to the tour. the social media is way better. So will they be welcomed back into the fold, these lived defectors? That's going to take time to sort out.

But if a deal gets consummated, if everyone, you know, is posing in the Rose Garden together with the president of the United States, that will go a long way towards, I think, building bridges to reuniting the sport and to bringing the live guys back into the fold. And so if that does blow up and live sticks around forever and the top players are never together on the same tour ever again. That's not a great legacy for the guys who went over there. As Tiger Woods, by the way, a brief update, is literally dating Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-wife.

What is your thought about Tiger Woods, now becoming part of the broader Trump family? Well, I love Tiger, and I love Vanessa, and Tiger actually called me a few months ago, and he'd have a very special, very good relationship with Tiger. I played golf with him a couple of times. times over the last month. And he's a fantastic guy and a fantastic athlete. And he told me about it. And I said, Tiger, it's good. I'm very happy for both. I just let them both be happy.

Let them both. Just like it's another plot twist. Just a just a plot twist. It's been a journey. You know, we're now, we're now, there's basically three years to the day since live launched. And in some ways, it's made golf more important than ever. It's made people realize like, geez, maybe if I want to be somebody in the world of global finance or geopolitics, I better work on my short game because it's, it is a powerful, powerful force. And so this is where I just need to state what may already be obvious to you at this point, given how American industry has largely reacted to the current administration's whims, as the former FTC chair put it to us,

which is that Trump's extensive portfolio of golf courses, the clubs he bought so that Donnie from Queens, could, in fact, be a member, have been trending up. The whole thing where the PGA decided to punish Trump for his irresponsible rhetoric and January 6th and all that stuff, that is long over. Yeah, so with Trump's entry into politics, you know, the stocks crashed because he became radioactive, everything got taken away. But now it's starting to rise because he's exerting his influence.

And the European tour, or also known as the DP World Tour, that's a big Dubai company, DP World, which paid hundreds of millions of dollars to rename it as part of this further influx of Middle Eastern money and professional golf. The DP World Tour recently announced that the Scottish Open will be played this year at Trump, Aberdeen, which is one of the newer properties in some of the most spectacular dunes in the world. And so this campaign that Trump is on to get back in the good graces of the golf world is clearly working. You know, this is the first real domino to fall. And so you may be wondering, relatedly, if it even matters at all that, you know, Trump's biggest financial backer and most notable top advisor, Elon Musk, just called for his impeachment last Friday. Or if it matters that Musk also tweeted that Trump is in the Epstein files.

Or if it matters, more specifically, that Trump's club in Bedminster. the one we discussed earlier, just got hit with 18 health code violations last month, nine of them labeled critical, making Trump National Golf Club the most poorly rated establishment in Somerset County, New Jersey. But it does not. None of it seems to. Golf, like America, moves on from such stories with the speed of our president driving his own golf cart. And yeah, look, Trump owns 15-quartered.

All around the world, 11 of them in the U.S., one of them opened during his first administration in Dubai. And the discussion now around Trump Aberdeen, the new host of a newly rebranded DP World Tour, is extremely familiar. This course is going to look incredible on TV. People are going to want to go play it. So, yeah, the stock is rising, and who knows what's the next announcement will be. but for sure, you know, behind the scenes, you see it with law firms, you see it with corporations, you see it with political parties, people are sort of bowing or caving to the Trump influence. And so the European tour is trying to get out in front of that and welcome them back into the fold.

And that's a huge deal in the context of Trump's desire to re-aggrat himself in the golf world. And in terms of the dream, in terms of what reintegration into polite golf society looks like, Alan, what is Trump dreaming of when it comes to his courses? Yeah, a soft landing for post-political life. You know, nothing would make him happier than starting in 2028. He can just play golf and host golf tournaments. Literally nothing would make him happier. So, you know, Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump's never going to get that. But if he can solve this, I think he'll feel like he's won up on Obama. And in terms of that ultimate and most exclusive prize, Donald Trump, finally hosting his first major championship, the president of the United States, does have a soft target for his soft power. The RNA, which runs the British Open, they are the ultra-traditionalists in the golf world, as you can imagine.

And they have not tried to hide their disdain for Donald Trump. And they will cut off their nose to spite their face and not go back to Turnberry, which is such a wonderful venue. just to prove their point. Like they've made that so clear. But now reporting is starting to bubble out, you know, the Scottish government

trying to get in the good graces of the Trump administration are trying to broker an open at Turnberry. So this is going to be quite a high-stakes negotiation because the guys that run the RNA, they do need some government funding, they do need their help every year to make the opens work. And so will they cave? You know, we've seen this,

So many entities have cave to Donald Trump and get the occasional Harvard that wants to fight and has the resources to do so. Does the RNA want to fight? It wouldn't be as public. This would all happen over shifters of brandy and oak paneled libraries across, you know, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

But how is that going to play out? And it's going to be fascinating because those guys over there at the RNA do not want Trump to overshadow their tournament. They do not want him on the grounds. And if it comes to pass that Turnberry gets an open here sometime soon, that will be an ultimate expression of soft power. Yeah. Alan Shepnuck, I appreciate you speaking truth to soft power, as it were, even if occasionally you are also being called the worst liar and a pathetic human. I mean, for Phil, it's almost a compliment.

That's probably a badge of honor. This has been Pablo Torre finds out A Metal Arc Media production And I'll talk to you next time