The third event on the controversial Saudi-backed tour is being played in Bedminster, New Jersey, a course owned by Trump.
A LIV Golf source told Reuters that Trump and his son Eric will play 2020 US Open winner DeChambeau and two-time major winner Johnson during Thursday’s Pro-Am ahead of the first round, which starts the next day.
The LIV Golf tour has been widely criticized for offering huge sums of money from Saudi Arabia, a country with dismal human rights records, for players to leave traditional golf tours. Earlier this month, Trump told golfers they should join the LIV Golf Series and “get the money now.”
“All those golfers who remain ‘loyal’ to the very disloyal PGA, in all its various forms, will pay a heavy price when the inevitable MERGER with LIV occurs and you get nothing but a big ‘thank you’ from PGA officials who do million dollars a year,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday.
“If you don’t take the money now, you won’t get anything after the merger, and it just goes to show how smart the original signatories were.”
His comments came as a group of 9/11 survivors said they were “appalled” by the “offensive, disrespectful and hurtful” LIV Golf Tour ahead of the New Jersey event, held about 50 miles (80 km) from the site of the deadly terror attack .
Speaking Tuesday at a news conference near the course in Bedminster, Terry Strada, chairman of 9/11 Families United – a coalition of families and survivors of the 2001 terrorist attacks – said holding such a tournament so close to the site of the most -the worst terrorist attack in American history is wrong.
Players have also been criticized for abandoning the established PGA Tour and DP World Tour in search of impressive cash payouts.
Allegations of Saudi government complicity in the September 11, 2001 attacks have long been a point of contention in Washington. Fifteen of the 19 al-Qaeda terrorists who hijacked four planes were Saudi nationals, but the Saudi government has denied any involvement in the attacks.
The 9/11 Commission, established by Congress, said in 2004 that it had found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” al-Qaeda.
Still, the families of the victims pressed for more disclosures, and last year the FBI released a document detailing the FBI’s work investigating alleged logistical support that a Saudi consulate official and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent in Los Angeles provided at least two kidnappers.
Responding to the criticism, LIV Golf told CNN in a statement: “As we have said all along, these families have our deepest sympathies. Although some may disagree, we believe that golf is a force for good in the world.”
The 9/11 issue is just one of a number of criticisms of the LIV Golf Series.
Led by former world No.1 Greg Norman, the team-based LIV series is backed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) – a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia – and has pledged to award $250 million of the total prize fund.
Tournaments are played over 54 holes, not the PGA Tour’s 72 holes, and there are no players cut during tournament play.
The huge amounts of money up for grabs and the less demanding requirements have prompted a number of golfers – many in the twilight of their careers – to break away from the PGA Tour and join LIV, including six-time major winner Phil Mickelson, four-time major champion Brooks Koepka and former world No. 1 Johnson.
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