It's the End of LIV Golf as We Knew It (and Trump Feels Fine)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: "It's the End of LIV Golf as We Knew It (and Trump Feels Fine)"
Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Pablo Torre (The Athletic)
Guest: Alan Shipnuck (Golf journalist, author of "LIV and Let Die")

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Overview

In this episode, Pablo Torre and golf writer Alan Shipnuck undertake a sharp, darkly comic, and thoroughly detailed post-mortem of LIV Golf— the controversial Saudi-funded golf tour whose spiraling fortunes and sudden collapse signal profound changes in sports, geopolitics, and power. The conversation unpacks how a geopolitical gamble, turbo-charged by petrodollars, shook up the venerable PGA, ensnared Donald Trump, and ultimately fell apart under the pressure of global events, financial limits, and the stubborn endurance of sporting tradition.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction: Chaos and Metaphor (03:04 – 04:46)

• Alan appears on the show with a visible shaving accident, dryly comparing the literal “bleeding” of his neck to the financial and organizational “bleeding” of LIV Golf.
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “Do not shave in a hurry before the most important podcast appearance of your entire career.” (03:34)
• Pablo sets the stage: LIV Golf’s collapse has become a public spectacle, a perfect coda to its years-long run of chaos and excess.

2. The Rise and Decadence of LIV Golf (04:46 – 08:17)

• Alan recounts the excesses of LIV’s early years: private 747s, palatial accommodations, vast prize purses to lure top golfers.
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: "It was like if Louis XIV got into golf and sponsored a tournament… Golf, but louder." (06:48)
• The financial unsustainability: multi-million dollar deals for golfers produced little in return for actual viewership.
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “You can’t pay guys on the scale of Patrick Mahomes if they only deliver, you know, 2% of the eyeballs.” (08:17)
• Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) reportedly lost around $5 billion in five years.

3. Soft Power, Geopolitics & The End of Vanity Investment (10:22 – 15:08)

• The true aim of LIV was soft power: legitimacy and influence for the Saudi regime among western elites.
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “LIV was never really about golf. It was about soft power.” (10:22)
• The collapse of the league was accelerated by a complex mix: falling oil revenues, the war in Iran, and Saudi Arabia tightening spending.
• The gold rush for Saudi sports investments slowed. Projects like Tom Brady’s flag football league and European snooker tournaments were also cut. The new focus: stick to the blockbusters like F1 and Premier League holdings.

4. How LIV Happened: Competition, Disruption, and Lawsuits (15:08 – 17:54)

• Origins: LIV’s model was lifted from the Premier Golf League—whose founders are now suing the Saudis.
• The Premier League’s ten-year sustainability plan was never given a chance; Saudi backers lost patience at year five.

5. Politics, Trump, and Golf’s Social Hierarchies (19:06 – 22:12)

• Trump’s golf empire, always snubbed by America’s elite clubs, found redemption (and revenue) by partnering with LIV.
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “The only organization that would take on Trump, who was so radioactive in the golf world, was LIV Golf.” (20:56)
• Trump’s personal quest for legitimacy in the golf world was symbiotic with LIV’s—and now, ironically, his Iran war helped end it.

6. Sportswashing and the Price of Legitimacy (26:01 – 30:23)

• Saudi Arabia arguably got what it wanted: access, normalized relations, and business deals in world capitals through LIV events, regardless of financial losses.
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “It wasn’t necessarily to make money. It was to win hearts and minds.” (26:01)
• Other Saudi investments (like major stakes in media, e.g., the Paramount/Warner Brothers deal) are effectively furthering soft power agendas.

7. PGA Tour’s Moral High Ground and Hypocrisy (29:26 – 31:30)

• The PGA Tour initially attacked LIV on moral grounds—especially over Saudi human rights abuses and 9/11 victims—but “co-opted” the narrative once it needed Saudi money itself.
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “The moral argument was fine until you give it up to take the money.” (30:23)

8. “Zombie LIV” and The Uncertain Future (36:00 – 40:52)

• Even in death, LIV may shuffle on in a contractual afterlife: "zombie LIV".
• Much hinges on what happens with star players like Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, and emerging young talent.
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “You can’t have a professional sports league without the athletes. And that’s what it’s going to come down to.” (39:35)
• Speculation that LIV might try to survive with new investors, now absent Saudi baggage.

9. PGA’s Winning Maneuvers & Social Media Reform (40:52 – 42:41)

• The PGA is welcoming back defectors with new "returning member" programs—except, pointedly, Phil Mickelson.
• They are also revamping social media rules to entice back personalities like Bryson, who could just as easily become a digital golf influencer.

10. The Unbuyable Elite: Exclusion Remains (33:23 – 35:36)

• Despite all the money poured into golf, some domains remain closed: Augusta and the R&A’s old guard won’t let in Saudi officials or Trump—whom, Shipnuck jokes, will "never get a green jacket."
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “There are some things that money cannot buy you when it comes to sports.” (33:23)
  • Quote — Alan Shipnuck: “The best way to not become a member of Augusta National is to ask to become a member of Augusta National.” (34:29)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On LIV’s conception and collapse:
  • Alan Shipnuck: “We’re building the plane as we fly it, and now the plane has crashed all around them. The wings just fell off, there’s one engine left, it’s smoking.” (04:46)
• On unsustainable spending:
  • Pablo Torre: “The premise of spending $5 billion in less than five years was not an indictment, it was an advertisement. This is what Saudi Arabia can do.” (09:12)
• On golf’s soft power:
  • Alan Shipnuck: “In Washington, D.C., all the politicians hang out at Burning Tree Golf Club.” (10:22)
• On the vanity of acceptance:
  • Alan Shipnuck: “Trump’s never going to become a member of any of these great old clubs. Even though he’s been elected president twice… it’s never going to happen for him.” (34:29)

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Important Timestamps

• 04:46 — Alan’s plane crash metaphor for LIV Golf’s chaos
• 06:48 — Decadence: LIV Golf’s early excess
• 08:17 — On unsustainable athlete pay
• 09:12 — Saudis’ $5 billion loss estimate
• 10:22 — LIV Golf as a tool of soft power
• 13:46 — Saudi retrenchment and shift in sports investment strategy
• 19:06 — Trump’s quest for legitimacy and LIV partnership
• 26:01 — Sportswashing as LIV’s real payoff
• 30:23 — PGA’s moral reversal and hypocrisy
• 34:29 — Augusta National’s unbuyable exclusivity
• 39:35 — LIV’s “lost their money, but also their baggage” moment
• 42:41 — PGA’s strategic reforms to lure back star talent
• 47:48 — Phil Mickelson goes underground as LIV collapses

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Tone & Language

• The conversation is wry, irreverent, and deeply informed, frequently toggling between gallows humor and sharp analysis.
• Pablo is playful but incisive, pushing for clarity and indictment; Alan is sardonic, forthcoming, and full of vivid metaphor ("volcanic" bowel movements, anyone?).

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Conclusion

The episode chronicles the spectacular rise and fall of LIV Golf, tracing the massive flows of Saudi cash and global geopolitics to a convoluted, sometimes farcical, but ultimately sobering outcome. In the end, LIV’s bid to transform golf—and burnish Saudi image—ran headlong into global politics, financial reality, and a stubborn old guard. As much as money can buy in sports, the episode suggests, there are still some doors left closed to even the richest outsiders. And for all its messy drama—Trump’s perpetually bruised ego, the PGA’s moral backflips, and Phil Mickelson’s enigmatic silence—the future of professional golf, if not entirely uncorrupted, retains some vestige of what money still can’t buy.

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For listeners eager to understand the knots of power, money, and ego in modern sports, this episode is a brisk, bracing, and often darkly comic education.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

[Alan Shipnuck]

It's interesting to think that Trump helped save Liv Golf and then him waging war in Iran may end Liv Golf

[Pablo Torre]

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[Alan Shipnuck]

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[Pablo Torre]

I just heard something that completely shocked me, which is that 45% of girls and 32% of boys feel overwhelming stress from just being on social media and together 25% of of both feel worse about their own lives. Researchers found teens who spend more than five hours a day on their phones are at double the risk for suicidal thoughts. Bottom line, teens and phones don't mix. And with a daughter and myself, I am constantly worried about when she reaches an age where we'll have to have the phone talk. But here's the good news. There is a solution. A company called Gab, which has solved the problem by doing something that no one else is doing. Their approach is tech in steps. Tech in Steps works by providing safer phones and watches for kids with no social media. Tailored to every age, offering the right device at the right time. From GPS tracking enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent enabled apps for tweens and teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. You don't have to give your kid advice that was made for an adult. Get them Gab, which keeps them socially connected without social media. And right now you can use our code to get 60% off a kid's phone. That will make parenting easier and give you more peace of mind. That's why I am recommending Gab. Visit gab.comptfo and use code PTFO for an exclusive offer. That's Gab G. A, B, B. I

[Alan Shipnuck]

have a small problem here.

[Pablo Torre]

I was going to say a bleeding. Alan Shipnook. Given the topic we're here to discuss, it's something that raises questions immediately as your. Your neck. Your neck is.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Can you see this?

[Pablo Torre]

I can. We can all see. Who did this to you, Alan. Let's start there.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Are we recording?

[Pablo Torre]

We are recording. Who did this to you? I demand answers. I demand accountability.

[Alan Shipnuck]

It's not Greg Norman, although he probably would have loved to have taken a knife to my throat at some point.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't know how many more convenient Segways you can give me as you clutch a piece of toilet PA to a wound right at your Adam's apple. This is ridiculous.

[Alan Shipnuck]

This is a public service announcement. Do not shave in a hurry before you know the most important podcast appearance of your entire career.

[Pablo Torre]

That's right.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Huge mistake. I'm going to. Should I put a turtleneck on? Like, I'll legit put a turtleneck on.

[Pablo Torre]

I had no idea Alan was me bleeding from his neck.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Hold on, I'm going to turtleneck.

[Pablo Torre]

So now that you have your turtleneck on, you no longer have to staunch the bleeding? I. I do want to get to the bleeding in the world of golf. I just regard you as one of the most plugged in people that I know, certainly into this sport, certainly into the world of live. So just give me a sense, just behind the scenes as the collapse, as the bleeding has been happening steadily into public view. Now, how would you explain this to someone who's not getting the texts and calls and the messages that you have been navigating over the last month now?

[Alan Shipnuck]

I mean, LIV has been chaotic from day one. I remember one of their executives telling me back in 2022, we're building the plane as we fly it, and now the plane is crash all around them. The wings just fell off, there's one engine left, it's smoking, some of the windows have popped out, and people are getting sucked out of the plane. Like any number of metaphors we could come up with. But LIV has been chaos merchants this whole way through, and it could only end this way. Just total messiness, uncertainty. The information war between the tours, the players, the agents, everyone trying to carve out the future while they're trying to figure out what that's going to be in real time. It's just a perfect ending to this era of disruption and bull. Liv Golf CEO, has been trying to quell the speculation that the league is in deep financial trouble. Scott o' Neill sent a memo to his staff yesterday in which he insists the 2026 season of the controversial tour will continue as planned and uninterrupted. The Financial Times, among others, has reported that Saudi Arabia's public investment fund is on the verge of cutting its financial backing.

[Pablo Torre]

Is there a warning to the world from golf, all that Saudi cash that's been lavished on sport? Are we seeing the end of vanity investment? With huge breaking news that live golf as we know it is over? As expected, the tour has just confirmed that Saudi Arabia's public investment fund will no longer provide financial backing, with chairman Yassir Al Rahman also set to leave.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Well, it looks like it's the end of the road, but as far as live are concerned, the show must go on.

[Pablo Torre]

I want to remind people of the decadence of the sales pitch, right? Because so much of what's happening, the schadenfreude that everyone is hearing around sports, around the collapse and the wounds, live. When it was born in 2022, for those who don't remember, what did it look and sound like?

[Alan Shipnuck]

It was like if Louis XIV got into golf and sponsored a tournament. When you think of a golf tournament, you likely think of silence when the players are hitting their shots. But that is not how it works on the LIV Golf tour. Golf, but louder. That's how LIV golf wants to be known. Our approach is to treat it like an NBA game or an NHL game or an NFL game, where the entire course is integrated, like an arena. You know, they were chartering the 747s to fly players from A to B. They had their own personal drivers, and they had their own chefs, and they just took it to the illogical extreme and shopping trips for the wives, and you name it. Because they were trying to create a culture. They were trying to give players on the PG Tour a reason to jump. And of course, when Liv arrived, there were only four tournaments on the PGA Tour that had a purse of more than $9 million. That doesn't count the majors. Those are not conducted by the PGA Tour. And all of a sudden, Liv showed up with $25 million purses. The scale of the money was unheard of. And then those were for the weekly tournaments. Then they were signing these. These guaranteed deals. And, you know, Brooks Koepka's swing coach had a quote, you know, that Brooks deserves to be paid like an NFL quarterback. And he was. He got that contract, right?

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, so John Rom gets $300 million. Phil Mickelson your boy gets $200 million. Brooks Koepka, $130 million. As you just referenced Dustin Johnson, $125 million.

[Alan Shipnuck]

The flaw in that thinking was, and actually it was Roy McElroy who pointed this out, and he's one of the guys who said no to live money. There was a tour event that was on the same day as, like, the AFC Championship game. And the ratings for the AFC Championship were 50 times what the PGA Tour event pulled. So you can't pay guys on the scale of Patrick Mahomes if they only deliver, you know, 2% of the eyeballs. Right now, professional golfers are the most overpaid athletes in any sport on a per eyeball basis. And that's because LIV just pumped the numbers up to a completely unsustainable level.

[Pablo Torre]

But the estimations of how much the PIFF has lost on liv, is there a back of the envelope math that you feel like makes sense?

[Alan Shipnuck]

Oh, Yeah. I mean, $5 billion is, is a very solid number what they've lost in less than five years.

[Pablo Torre]

So the reason I wanted to bring Alan Shifnock, our journalist friend, back on the show is not to just dirt on the apparent grave of LIV Golf, the subject Alan literally wrote the book about and is covered as closely as anybody. I wanted to have Alan back on because by understanding how boring old golf became this geopolitical soap opera, I suspect that we might find something out about the future of sports in General. Because when LIV first launched, the premise of spending $5 billion in less than five years was not an indictment, it was an advertisement. This is what Saudi Arabia can do. That was what was so eye opening as much as anything. The Saudi Sovereign wealth fund, the pif, the public investment fund, at the discretion of Yasir Al Ramayan, who was the head of it, but above him, of course, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince. Deploying their sum total of about $900 billion that they had to distribute. And they chose the PGA Tour, the most country club traditionalist sports organization in America, arguably as their first big project.

[Alan Shipnuck]

You know, LIV was never really about golf. It was about soft power. And it was a chance for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to buy access to the Western world to its thought leaders, its political leaders, who all love golf. In Washington, D.C. all the politicians hang out at Burning Tree Golf Club.

[Pablo Torre]

But at some point late last year, it began to look like Saudi Arabia's unlimited budget, which had reportedly also guaranteed $125 million to Bryson DeChambeau, for instance, might actually have limits after all.

[Alan Shipnuck]

I mean, it really goes back to December when when Brooks Koepka announced he was returning to the PGA Tour. That was a Christmas surprise. And that was the first crack in the wall that things were happening behind the scenes and not everybody was privy to. And then Patrick Reed followed. So at that point, you know, things are happening from a business standpoint, things are not going well at live.

[Pablo Torre]

And by the end of February, President Donald Trump, the golfer in chief himself, who was scheduled to host two live events at his course is this year, also decided to do this.

[Guest / Additional Commentator]

A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran

[Pablo Torre]

lives executives tried to dismiss Saudi Arabia's collateral financial damage from the war as just a flesh wound. But in April, the Saudi Public Investment Fund Fund finally presented its new five year plan, a plan which focused on, quote, maximizing financial returns and strengthening investment efficiency. Sounding more like McKinsey than the money waterfall that would eternally keep sports properties in America going up and to the right. In fact, this plan ultimately reduced Saudi Arabia's international investments by 10%. At which point I started monitoring what the sports industry was thinking about the war in Iran.

[Alan Shipnuck]

People made the parallel very quickly. In fact, I tweeted, you know, now that oil prices are going to skyrocket, maybe Liv can resign, Bryson, because the Saudi economy is tied very closely to the price of oil. But then the refineries are starting to, you know, getting set on fire by drone attacks and the straits were closed and you couldn't export the oil. So the whole situation is so volatile. But if you're paying attention, this was always going to be a thing. And then of course, in April when the PIF dropped this five year strategic plan, they made it very clear they were reducing their discretionary spending. And it wasn't just live golf.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Alan Shipnuck]

PIFF was going to underwrite Tom Brady's flag football league. That went away. Snooker is a huge sport in Europe and parts of the Middle east. And Saudi Arabia has sponsored the Snooker Masters. They had a 10 year deal and they canceled that after two years. They're selling one of their soccer teams in the Saudi league the PIF owns. So sports is consolidating, I think around, around F1 around, you know, English Premier, like some of these, these mega franchises, but sort of the vanity projects, the gambles, the like. Let's take a flyer on this. Like those are going away.

[Pablo Torre]

The theory was we're going to diversify our portfolio as a country, as a sovereign wealth fund from just oil into all of these things. And sports was seemingly going to be their main artery towards that. And yet as all of this was happening, it turns out. Oh, right. But the way to buy up all of those things, to fund all of those things was with oil. Yeah.

[Alan Shipnuck]

And for decades, there were no professional sports activities in Saudi Arabia. It was only when MBS seized power and there was a young, restless population. He's like, we gotta distract these people, people. And so then it was like, let's bring on the sports. And so they, they just said yes to everything. And now as time has gone by, they've seen what works, what doesn't, what people care about, what's losing billions of dollars every year. And so, you know, there was, there was a gold rush sort of Fever it around 2015, 16, 17, when MBS assumed power and they just launched all these initiatives. This league was a monument to decadence. And that, that's going to end. On golf Twitter, we call it Zombie Live. You know, it may, it may keep going for a year or two because they have to fulfill contracts which they've signed with venues and boards of tourism and corporations and players. But Lib, as we know it, looks like is dead.

[Pablo Torre]

But I wonder if this has said to you anything about what the ceiling was for this project to begin with.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Live golf began as the Premier Golf League. And it was dreamed up by these Brits who were just disgruntled golf fans. And the reason the PGA Tour was vulnerable to a challenge is because it never really had a competitor. And any business without a competitor is going to get stale and bloated and inefficient and maybe a little boring. And that was the PGA Tour. And so the Premier Golf League sought to reimagine what professional golf could be. They brought on the Saudis as investors. The Saudis, specifically al Rumayan, pledged $500 million to try and launch this Premier Golf League. They could never sign the players. They weren't closers. And ultimately the Saudis were like, okay, we can do this without them. And they more or less cut and pasted the entire Premier Golf league format. The 54 hole shotguns, the purses, the 14 tournament skills. That was all from the Premier Golf League. The Saudis shamelessly ripped it off. And in fact, now they're getting sued finally by the founders of the Premier Golf League, which is a whole other story. But the thing that the Premier Golf League was selling was a ten year plan. They said, is it going to take us 10 years to make this sustainable? There's massive costs up front to sign players to build infrastructure like it's going to take 10 years. And Liv hired some of the consultants who helped the Premier Golf League. The same humans went from one side to the next and they were always preaching it's a 10 year plan because they knew how long it was going to take. And ultimately Yasir didn't have the stomach for it. Or more specifically, his boss did not. We're only in year five. And so Liv Golf has made, ironically has made some progress. Their revenue is going to be up this year. They brought on some blue chip sponsors in HSBC and Rolex and Workday, the individual teams have had some success in attracting more endemic sponsorship from golf club manufacturers and apparel. When they went to South Africa and Australia this year, they had over 100,000 fans on site. They sold out the premium hospitality in Korea. They signed this TV deal all throughout Asia. So things that were starting to turn, obviously they got world ranking points, which was a huge deal to try and attract some young players. Like the depth of the field has gotten much stronger by bringing in some good young players. So Liv was making progress. It was halting and it was slow, but signs were there. But ultimately we're never going to know what they could have done in five more years because that's asking for a tremendous amount of patience and tremendous amount of capital. And that's just not how the world works. You can't game plan a war in your backyard like has happened to the Saudis. You don't know what's going to happen in the next presidential election. And no one in, in Today's world has 10 years.

[Pablo Torre]

I want to get to the sort of timeline here in a second. But yeah, look, one of the most famous quotes was the one that you got from Phil Mickelson that he resented and continues to resent. I can only imagine because he said to you as you're writing your book on him, quote, we know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates. And so again in that infamous quote about the scary motherfuckers, as he calls them, that are the Saudi authorities, there was already this notion of, yes, but there is a transaction that is worth it. But what's interesting to me is the plan and the strategy and who are the parties who most could use a partner like Saudi Arabia. And so I bring it back to Vision 2030 and that was Saudi Arabia's grand plan, and it was launched in 2016. You may recall something else that happened that was quite Pivotal later in 2016.

[Guest / Additional Commentator]

The Fox News decision desk has called

[Alan Shipnuck]

Pennsylvania for Donald Trump. This means that Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. One of the few times golf as a, as an institution ever showed any backbone was when the PGA America pulled the PGA Championship from Trump. Bedminster is in reaction to some of the inflammatory rhetoric of the presidential campaign. And the PGA Tour repudiated Trump. They took away his event at Doral, sent it across the wall to Mexico City. The LPGA and Trump had been longtime partners that ended the British Open has famously repudiated Trump and refused to bring the Open Championship to Trump. Turnberry Golf means more to Trump than any of us can ever imagine because he's always found a way to buy himself into the highest echelons of society. The one thing you cannot do is buy your way into the great old clubs of America. So he was never allowed to become a member at a guy Augusta national or Pine Valley. And you can, you can buy the biggest, ugliest house in Florida and Mar a Lago, but you can't buy your way into Seminole Golf Club. And this burned Trump to the core. That golf had always turned its back on him. And so he had to create this, this whole empire of his own clubs in his image with the tacky waterfalls and the Roman columns and all that stuff. And so hosting these tournaments was, was. This was the pat on the head from the establishment he'd always needed. Like, we still don't want you as, but we will bring our, our tournament to your venue and, and we'll, we'll accept you in that manner. But then he lost all the tournaments, and that wounded him so deeply. And the only organization that would, that would take on Trump, who was so radioactive in the golf world, was LIV Golf.

[Guest / Additional Commentator]

Well, I've known these people for a long time in Saudi Arabia, and they've been friends of mine for a long time. They've invested in many American companies. They own big percentages of many, many American companies. And frankly, what they're doing for golf is so great. What they're doing for the players is so great. The salaries are going to go way up. The PGA was not loved by a lot of the players, as you know, for a long time.

[Alan Shipnuck]

They were desperate for somewhere to play. He had some pretty good golf courses. He raised his hand. And so, you know, the first season, two of the first eight events on LIV were at Trump venues. And so they became allies and he played in the Pro Am. His excellency Yeshir Al Ramayan. And this was just another way that the Saudi money could flow to the Trump family. Just like MBS gave a billion dollars to his son in law Jared Kushner for his investment portfolio. They were always allies when during the first Trump presidency. And so that was Trump's way back into the golf world. It's interesting to think that Trump helped save LIV golf and then him waging war in Iran may end LIV golf. He's going to lose the tournaments that he was being paid to. This all comes full circle.

[Pablo Torre]

It's remarkable, man, how symmetrical some of this is.

[Alan Shipnuck]

I mean, the PGA Tour had, it was a proud institution. It did not have the money that the Saudis did. It still doesn't. But they've won this war. You couldn't buy Rory or Scotty. You couldn't buy a membership at Augusta national, which you see or crave. The legacy of professional golf turns out not to be for sale. People still care about the old tournaments and the old venues. And you can't just crash the party with a lot of money, money. And of course, Trump's in the middle of all of it because after he was re elected, you know, one of the first things he did was try and call together the leaders in golf on both sides. And yes, I feel like he cared more about finding peace and professional golf than he did finding peace in Gaza. He was way more emotionally invested in trying to, in trying to solve this, this war in golf. And in a roundabout way he has. It's not how he envisioned in some grand handshake on the South Lawn, but he's played a role more.

[Pablo Torre]

So. I remember the last time we were hiring at PTFO and one candidate in particular really stood out. I recall them having smart questions, being really curious, just clearly eager to learn more about the role. And you could tell, you could tell that they really wanted to be there. It's the kind of energy that's hard to miss. Yes, they were qualified, but they also felt like a natural fit. And their excitement in particular made the decision really easy. And if you are hiring, you want a candidate who is passionate about the role, but it's the sort of thing you can't necessarily get from a resume. Unless of course, you post your job on ZipRecruiter. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com PTFO because ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly. And there's a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first so you get to meet the right people faster. Which is why it's no wonder that ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. So find candidates who really want your job on ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a qualified candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com PTFO that's SipRecruiter.com PTFO meet your match on ZipRecruiter. One of the first thoughts I had while thinking about this unfolding story was that liv's whole war against the PGA Tour was not the most cost effective way to sportswash Saudi Arabia's human rights regulation record. In retrospect, you know, the whole bone sawing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the whole thing, for instance, about how President Donald Trump was hosting a tournament at his course in New Jersey over the protests of the families of 9, 11 victims who physically showed up. My sense was if you're going to spend $5 billion to normalize the kingdom, you probably could have just spent your money backing an incumbent American sports organization instead of trying to build an unsustainable rebel league in order to antagonize one. But while talking to Alan Shipnock, something jarring did occur to me as we continued the postmortem of this mission. Because what if you consider the fact that the PGA Tour already surrendered its supposed moral high ground in this battle? And what if Saudi Arabia also already got almost everything that it wanted?

[Alan Shipnuck]

You look at the alliances that the PIF and the Saudis have forged with Trump through LIV Golf. LIV has been successful going to these world capitals and conducting tournaments, whether it's been in Seoul, Korea, or it's been in Tokyo. It's been Mexico City. And for one week, they take over the town and they entertain the political and the business elite. And who knows how many deals have been cut for the PIF out of those weeks. And maybe that justifies the outlay of five to six billion dollars they spent on LIV Golf. When LIV went to Adelaide a few years ago, the premier of Southern Australia, you know, reaffirmed this long term commitment that Australia has to, you know, supply Saudi Arabia with billions of dollars every year of beef and wheat and barley and all these, all these things. So on one level, if you can feed your population, if you can distract them, and you can, you can prevent political unrest and regime change, it's definitely worth Jon Rahm's contract. And so you can't judge live as a traditional business or traditional sports league because the goals were very different. It wasn't necessarily to make money. It wasn't necessarily to export the values of golf. It was to win hearts and minds around the world it to sports. Watch the Saudi atrocities. And there's a really interesting piece of history here where the first ever professional golf tournament in Saudi Arabia was scheduled for January of 2019. It was the Saudi International that was dreamed up by Yasir Al Ramayan. It's going to be part of the European Tour schedule. And a couple months earlier, Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated and the entire Western world was pulling back from the Saudis. You know, Jeff Bezos canceled an appearance over there, and Ari Emanuel, he canceled the $400 million deal he'd been chasing for years. Richard Branson pulled out of a big deal with the pif. And at a moment where the Saudi elite were desperate for allies, the European Tour still conducted its tournament. And that was a monumental moment when. When the entire regime was vulnerable. And I think that was a. A fundamental affirmation that golf is our friend and we can count on these guys and they can help us achieve what we want politically.

[Pablo Torre]

The other thing I'm looking at, this portfolio, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, they're looking elsewhere, right? And so soft power. I mean, this is the reminder, you know, golf was one avenue, but it seems like the other one that they decided to go and back was, oh, right, paramount, they're spending $110 billion to go take over Warner Brothers. And I'll just quote this line from the Hollywood Reporter. The filing by Paramount Skydance with the securities and Exchange Commission did not outline how much the funds plan to contribute, but sources familiar with the investment said the total amount was around $24 billion, with Saudi Arabia's PIF contributing about $12 billion and sovereign wealth funds for Abu Dhabi and Qatar putting up around $6 billion each. This is part of a broader push by the country to curry favor with Trump. Trump by influencing Washington, and also keep young Saudi eyes and minds on the screens, not on questions of human rights. And so from the perspective inside of golf, what is the attitude from the PGA side of things? How much of the sports washing stuff is part of the golf conversation? How much of it is actually, you guys tried to kill us and look who's bleeding now.

[Alan Shipnuck]

A big talking point in the first year of live was the sports Washington. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, famously said, you know, no one's ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour. And they co opted the 911 families. And the Tour leaned in heavily on that. And it made sense because, you know, the Tour was a proud American institution and you had these scary mother coming in and trying to take it over. And so, so then it blew up on Monahan specifically, but the Tour in general, when after a year of fighting, they tried to cut a deal with the public investment fund. And then they looked like the ultimate hypocrites.

[Pablo Torre]

And so what's happened today, and to

[Alan Shipnuck]

your earlier question is we've recognized that together we can have a far greater impact on this game than we can working apart.

[Pablo Torre]

And I give Yasser great credit for

[Alan Shipnuck]

coming to the, coming to the table, coming to discussions with an open heart and an open mind. We did the same.

[Pablo Torre]

And the game of golf is better

[Alan Shipnuck]

for what we've done here today. The moral argument was fine until you, you give it up to take the money. In the beginning, the players were pounded with these questions about sports watching, about Khashoggi, about human rights or about MBS. And by year two, those had mostly gone away. And, you know, Bryson DeChambeau famously said, we're done with that. We talked about that last year, you. And it was kind of effective. And so sports watching is insidious because it works. There's been very little conversation in the last three years about, about sports watching. It's just completely gone away. And that's why you do it. The whole Paramount deal is interesting because CBS gets swept up in this, and CBS is the home of the Masters and home of the PGA Tour. And so there's been some thinking like that played a role in the PIF shutting down LIV Golf because we can't own both sides of the competition. If we were fighting amongst ourselves, if we're funding live and we're televising the PGA Tour. So, you know, depending on your level of conspiracy theory, you know that that may have been a factor. So we're just left to speculate. In, in this vacuum, Donald Trump doesn't

[Pablo Torre]

seem to have any hesitation about playing both sides. Here we are talking as he has just again hosted this tournament, a live tournament, at Trump national in Washington, D.C. and the PGA was at Doral the week before for the 2026 Cadillac championship. It was the first PGA Tour event to be held at one of Trump's properties since he became the president. And so even as all of the chaos is swirling and erupting, Trump is, as always, cashing in everywhere.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Elections have consequences. And when he won again, the PGA Tour finally said, okay, what can we do? He's the President of the United States. He wants to have a tournament. Let's give him a tournament. So they went back to Jeral. I mean, as an artistic endeavor, it was a total failure. The stands were empty, the golf course was boring. There was no buzz at all to that tournament. Rory McElroy, the Masters champ, skipped it. The tournament was a complete dud in every way, but it still made Donald Trump whole. He got a tournament back from the PGA Tour. And so, yeah, you're right. He's. He's always going to find a way to maneuver into any situation, and he's done that quite effectively with a golf. However, the Royal and Ancient still refuses to give him an Open. And I've talked to some of those old boys over there, these tweety gents who run that thing, and basically their stance is over our dead body. And even though the Scottish government has put a lot of pressure on them, they refuse to do it. They just gave the Open in 2028 to Royal Lithman St Anne's which is a course that nobody likes. Totally artless. And Turnberry is beautiful and wonderful and has all this great. They won't do it like they're the last line of defense. And it's kind of delicious in its own way. But everyone else in golf has come back to Trump. He's the sitting president, and he knows. He knows where the pressure points are, and so he's getting his way.

[Pablo Torre]

But the idea that even as the PGA is capitulating to Donald Trump, that there are places in this world, there are places in the world of golf that will not abide by him, them, because they do have some sense of a code that is not simply financial. It is, in the way that you put it. The thing that I do almost perversely love about sports, and this is the through line through this whole story, which is you could have $900 billion at your disposal. You can have all the money in the world. You could be the President of the United States. But there are some things that money cannot buy you when it comes to sports. And as much as I have never thought of a golf club as a place that could be a fortress against the power of money, it does remind me that some things can't be bought. And that might be the only thing left in terms of a moral high ground or anything resembling one that professional sports can offer us at this point.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Well, I mean, Al Rumayan openly coveted a green jacket to become a member of Augusta National. That would have been the ultimate acceptance of the western world. That would have given him access to the halls of power in a way that almost nothing else could. And when there was this short lived sort of truce between the Tour and LIV and these consultants put together, this prospectus of what the deal would entail, tucked into the small print was that Yasir wanted to become a member of Augusta National. And of course, the best way to not become a member of Augusta national is to ask to become a member of Augusta National. Like, that's just not how it's done. And so there's always been this thinking, like he was willing to light $5 billion on fire if he could have gotten a green jacket. When it became clear that wasn't going to happen, he's like, I'm out it. And there's this weird code in the golf world. And Trump's never going to become a member of any of these great old clubs. Even though he's been elected president twice and everything else, it's never going to happen for him. And that burns him so deeply and it drives a lot of his behavior. I truly believe that.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I think much like Alan Shipnuk's neck, he has a lot of scar tissue at this point around this topic. Oh, look at that. Almost all.

[Alan Shipnuck]

No, I think I just reopened it and then clawed it against my turtleneck. I just feel like dripping down my chest right now.

[Pablo Torre]

The flip side of this metaphor is that sometimes you can just pick at a scab and it starts bleeding all over again.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Yeah, yeah. Which in some ways, that's, that's what this, this whole story has become. You know, the, the scab picking is going to go on throughout 2026. The recriminations and the. Is turned up to full volume right now as, as everyone's posturing for who needs who more. Arban Lahiri's a, a very B list golfer who plays on Liv Golf. And he, he. But he's made $35 million since Liv launched. And he said, I don't even want to go back to the PGA Tour. And I was like, we don't want you anyway. The tenor of the debate is so juvenile. And then it's not going to end in 26, because if zombie Live goes on and if Jon Rahm is trapped there because of this ironclad contract and he's frittering away his prime years and he's miserable, it's a never ending story. And I mean, I remember when Golf used to be boring, and now we've got the President of the United States, we have the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, we have war in Iran, we have. We have Bryson in the Oval Office. Like it. It's. We've gone from the. The sports page to the business page to the front page. It's been an incredible ride.

[Pablo Torre]

The news that Yasir Al Ramayan had stepped down from Liv's board of directors was April 29. And who's running it now? Like, how does that work?

[Alan Shipnuck]

Yeah, I mean, the PIFF is going to continue funding it for the rest of this season. But Yasir pulling out, it was obviously very symbolic. It also was, to me, a total act of cowardice. Like, this was his project from the beginning. The captain should go. Go down with this ship. And, like, for him not to try and stick around and solve this, I thought was a weak sauce. That was a big deal for him to cut and run. And so, you know, they. They brought in this new CEO, Scott o', Neill, who's. Who's very dynamic. He's about a year and a half into his tenure.

[Pablo Torre]

Formerly from Madison Square garden and the 76ers.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Yeah. And so this is now his problem to solve. Can you reimagine Live and can you get some investment to keep it going? The answer might be yes. I talked to a couple LIVE executives after Alderamayen, you know, pulled up stakes. And of course, they only ever speak on background. You can't use their name, which is frustrating. But one of them said, like, just look at the money that's pouring into professional sports at every level, men's and women's. And you can now get in on LIVE for pennies on the dollar. We have all these deals in place. There is a lot of infrastructure on the TV side. We. We have venues, we have big markets, world capitals. It's a great value. And they also have a corporate support that's in place. And they have boards of tourism who are on board. No one knows if they have players.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Alan Shipnuck]

That is, in fact, the product. So the players are waiting to see how it's going to shake out and how, if you're Scott o', Neill, how you sell the future when you don't know what the future is, and neither do players. That's the ultimate balancing act. But again, there is a path forward for liv, but. But it's never going to be the noisy, splashy, disruptive force that it hoped to be.

[Pablo Torre]

I just want to reread one of the quotes from Scott o'. Neill. Who, again, not an easy hand to play given everything you've described. The war in Iran, perhaps the most unmanageable of all of the economic threats. But he was on the TNT broadcast. It was liv's tournament in Mexico City in mid April. And he. He says, quote, liv golf is in the best shape it's ever been in. Period, end of sentence. And I would play that video for you, except the video has been deleted.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Which feels also a bit perfect for this story.

[Alan Shipnuck]

One executive said to me, how many people hated live golf because of the Saudi influence? Probably two thirds of all the haters was around the Saudis. And now you take that away. It should make us more attractive to golf fans, should make us more attractive to corporations. You know, we're not radioactive. We're an independent sports league league. So they're trying to turn into a positive. Yeah, we lost all their money, but we also lost their baggage, too. But again, it. You can't. You can't have a professional sports league without the athletes. And that's what it's going to come down to. Bryson is, of course, the biggest domino here. John Rom's important symbolically, but he does not move the needle anywhere like. Like Bryson does. And if LIV can resign Bryson and maybe they just give him a piece of the league, you know, here you can have 25% equity of LIV Golf. Like, it creates some weirdness, but it also might be what it takes to sign him. It would appeal to Bryson. Like, you know, Tom Brady never owned a piece of the NFL. Tiger woods never owned a piece of the PGA Tour. Like, that might be how they can get his deal done if they can keep Bryson and his juice and his online presence. They have a lot of good young talent signed to deals who are. They're really gonna have nowhere else to play. I mean, LIV could remain a somewhat intriguing proposition, but of course, there's many ifs built into that sentence.

[Pablo Torre]

And I mean, look, the program that the PGA launched, right, the returning member program, which is just funny. It's like a gun buyback program for people who went to live or like, we're repatriating all of these exiles. I know Brooks Koepka accepted it, and that was, yes, extremely notable in terms of like, the weather vein pointing in one direction. But the PGA just has to be loving this man.

[Alan Shipnuck]

You mentioned the returning players program, which was so delicious because the. The tour just made it up willy nilly. And one of the criteria was if you'd won a major champions, you know, since 2022, guess who won a major in 2021, who they wanted to give a giant middle finger to Phil Mickelson. Like, they could have extended that window one more year and Phil would have been eligible. But that was Tiger woods and others just, Just saying. Just. Just turning the knife on Phil. So, yeah, they can craft some very narrow language that could get Bryson back, could get John Rom back if they want to. And you may have seen this today. This is a broke today, Pablo, that the Tour is revamping its social media policies for its members and giving them more latitude for what they post, how much they post, how much content they can capture at tournaments. Clearly, this is directed toward Bryson as a carrot, and it'll benefit other players, it'll benefit the Tour. Like, they've always been a few steps behind. So this is overdue anyway, but the timing is not an accident. Well, there's this whole wooing process going on, and Bryce is talking about, well, maybe I won't go back to the Tour. I'll just play YouTube Golf now to stay sharp. And so now the Tour has to figure out how they can sustain itself, wildly overpaying its players, but that they've won the war. But now they can. Can they survive the piece? You know, that's the question for the Tour. The chess pieces are always moving on the board. And that's what's so delicious about this.

[Pablo Torre]

It seems like the President likes the cut of his jib. Alan.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Yes.

[Guest / Additional Commentator]

Bryson's amazing. I mean, I say he's somebody that can put on 25, 30. At one point, I guess he put on almost 50, 50 pounds. Remember, he looked like a linebacker for the very first. And he decided he didn't like himself at that weight. It was all muscle, Gary. It was crazy. He looked like a massive football player. You wouldn't want to play monarchy. And he said he didn't like it. He. He developed too much speed. This is the problem with people. He had too much speed. He wanted to bring it down a little bit. So he lost. He can put on weight, like up and down like a yo yo. And he doesn't take a shot, okay? He doesn't need the fat shot. He just. I said, do you ever take this shot? He didn't even know what the hell I was talking about. What shot? No, he can put it on. He's a scientist. He's like the scientist with his body. He's a great guy.

[Alan Shipnuck]

When he did put it on those 50 pounds in a very short period of time, and it. It's in my book live and let die. I, I detailed his diet and so on. Close, close to Bryce and I asked him this, I said, how is, you know, how is he processing this? Like that's got to be hard on your body. They said, well, his bowel movements are volcanic. So I've always loved that word.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Guest / Additional Commentator]

Easy.

[Pablo Torre]

Try Ship station free for 60 days with full access to all features. No credit card needed. Go to shipstation.com and use code PTFO for 60 days for free. 60 days gives you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you are saving on every shipment. That's shipstation.com with code ptfo shipstation.com code ptfo howdy, howdy ho and welcome to Fantasy Fan. Fellas, I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Alan Shipnuck]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Pablo Torre]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Alan Shipnuck]

That's right.

[Guest / Additional Commentator]

Hey.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Pablo Torre]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Alan Shipnuck]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find fantasy fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

[Pablo Torre]

We haven't really even talked about Phil Mickelson. I know who's MIA right now for reasons that everyone is again, texting about out. But no one will say out loud for reasons that I think only inspire follow up investigations on my show and perhaps on your cell phone. But the question of like wait a minute, he's fighting to reopen this oil pipeline off the coast of California. We showed in a previous episode an extraordinarily graphic text having to do with President Trump.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And also by the way, the federal government is looking into that same company, Sable Offshore. And he's like currently in this episode also receiving votes for being messy. That's where golf is right now.

[Alan Shipnuck]

More than that, he was one of the key pieces in and he's a founding father of LIV Golf and he helped pay the lawyers who wrote some of the Constitution of LIV Golf. Like he has been there from the beginning and this whole thing is disintegrating around him and he's completely gone underground. It's wild. You're talking about one of the key protagonist in this entire drama and even though he's been out of sight, it doesn't slow anything down. The stories has so much momentum that you can lose a Phil Mickelson second most important golfer of our lifetimes and the greatest content machine the sport's ever known. And and nothing skips a beat like it's absolutely incredible.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I will merely quote Phil Mickelson here at the very end from November 8, 2025 at 7:23pm Eastern when he replied to my tweet by saying quote I've never heard of you and have no idea who you are but given what I know to be true and what you report, you're tabloid and I'll wait for the right opportunity. Period. Thumbs up emoji. Phil Mickelson, if you are out there and listening, I dare say that the right opportunity may have arrived. And if you want to talk to me or Alan Shipnuk, if I may speak on your behalf for a second here. Alan, I think both of us would love to hear from folks. Phil, both of us would welcome the opportunity for a follow up episode.

[Alan Shipnuck]

It's time. I mean he's going to have to emerge at some point and there's going to be an accounting. You know, it's just inevitable. The people need to hear Phil because in some ways he's been vindicated. You know his two biggest beefs to me or that the the players on the PGA Tour did not have enough say in their governance and that they were under par paid and as soon as LIV arrived the Tour blew up its entire governance structure to give the players all the power he was right about that. And they turned the spigot on and the money started flowing out of the reserves. And so Phil was right again. But because of who he is and the way he conducts his business, no one wants to give him credit.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's time for him to speak. It's time for him to make like Alan Ship Nu and just open up a vein.

[Alan Shipnuck]

Yes. I can't top that. I think we're done here.

[Pablo Torre]

Pablo. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.

[Alan Shipnuck]

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[Alan Shipnuck]

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[Pablo Torre]

See, that's a Premier host move right there. I wish I had a Premier group chat. I asked them where we should have

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[Pablo Torre]

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