PGA Tour’s return to Trump Doral ends the glamorous pro-Golfit shift

It is better not to attribute politics to what can be better attributed to money.

And money is the real reason after PGA Tour’s decision to restore a tour TrumpThe golf resort that the president has owned since 2012.

On Tuesday morning, the tour officially announced plans to return to the Doral’s Blue Monster course for a new tour called Miami Championship. In a slightly startling turn, the new tour will be the ninth event of signing the tournament in 2026, from eight to 2025, providing a field studied with stars and at least $ 20 million money for bags. The event will be played in the first week of May 2026, and will be the first PGA Tour event held since 2016.

It is difficult to find any interested party who does not benefit financially from the new Tournament Agreement with the President’s Miami Club. For Trump, the deal again brings the biggest professional golf tournament to its tournament home for more than five decades, a healthy incentive for a 2025 fruitful for its business interests. In addition to a “object fee” from the tournament, the event will give Trump Miami Resort a week of attention by the Tour brand, including oodles of national media exposure and the participation of many of the world’s largest golf stars.

The tournament, meanwhile, adds another big money event, with a big sponsor in the regular calendar of the season with practically cost-price, if it can be called a price, to welcome itself to the president’s good graces after a decade away. The announcement continues in the footsteps of some industry heads, Recently CEO of my Cook ApplePublic shows of whose affection for the President have helped to advance the interests of their business. (A friendly relationship with the administration can be essential for the future of the tour business, especially if it progresses a Liv Union that would be subject to the approval of the Department of Justice.)

Even the Miami Tournament Tournament partner, CBS, is to win from the deal, adding another week to programming the signing events at a TV 2026 PGA TV that also includes FedEx Cup Play off. CBS was the natural choice to get the handbag – she waited for decades before the tournament stopped visiting – but the news comes after the consequences of a grueling process without the new owner of the network, David Ellison, to do Some omissions at the White House To reach an agreement. Miami Championship adds another part of Trump -friendly sports programming in CBS air waves in 2026, which is also expected to include a UFC match with Trump champions From the White House lawn to celebrate the 250th birthday of America in July.

Can you hear the message? For all parties and in all cases, it is short and open: Follow the money.

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Staggering as it may sound, These money issues are nothing new to Doral. Sixty years ago, the professional golf initially came to property under a similar agreement. The main character was then another New York real estate developer, Alfred Kaska, whose dreams of building a world -class golf resort needed a marketing vehicle. Fortunately for the casket, the best players in the world were on sale, playing on a newborn tour around the world, with no high -paying sponsors and dollars TV. If the casket could afford to pay the players, they would appear to play a tour in his new resort. He coped with the bag for the inaugural tournament from the pocket, raising the starting bag of $ 35,000 to $ 50,000 as an extra carrot for the largest golf stars, and was born Dorel Country Club Open Invitational.

The paradoxical name would not go up, but the casket tournament did. Billy Casper won the repetition of the inauguration in 1962, which was also attended by Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Jimmy Demaret. For the next five decades, Golf returned to the blue monster every spring.

63 years that followed that first tournament marked the transformation of the golf tour from wild west to stale List that began as the Doral CC Open Invitational was taken to the Dorel-East Open, then the Ford Championship and, finally, the WGC-Cadillac Championship. A $ 50,000 bag aired nearly $ 10 million.

Trump, a golf iconoclast long before it was a political fire, is only a small part of Doral’s history. At the time he bought the property in 2012The Doral Pga Tour event was already in its latest form. The days of Tiger’s glory had begun to fade, and the sponsor’s interest was fading with him. But Trump – sometimes the dealer himself – seized the opportunity. He possessed a constant presence for the event, being tapped across the property During the tournament week, posing for photos with the winner and even appointing a villa on the Woods property. (Trump introduced Tiger with a “key” to the villas in a delightful ceremony before WGC 2014; He would later submit Woods with a second part of the equipment, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2019.)

However, before Tuesday, it can be said that Trump’s most important contribution to Doral-Pga Tour was in the last stimulation. In 2016, while Trump’s presidential candidate was winning steam, Cadillac ended her sponsorship for the tournament held in Doral. The tournament with the property provided the opportunity to move the incident if a sponsor could not be found, and the tour forced it, moving the handwritten event to Mexico for the 2017 season.

The tour claimed that Trump’s Invective Campaign Comments on immigrants were not a factor in the decision to change the countries, as they had been for other major corporate players such as the NBC Universal and Macy’s, who had also avoided Trump’s business.

“The reason we’re not there because we couldn’t find a sponsor,” Said Commissioner Jay Monahan In 2017. “I spent a lot of time trying to find a sponsor for that tournament. To get away was frustrating. If we were to find a sponsor, we would still be there.”

However, optics was shining: the tournament was leaving a candidate under fire for his comments to the Mexicans in favor of a tournament held in Mexico. Of course, the reason for that departure may have been as Monahan suggested: that the business environment facing the hand event was not as friendly as the tournament had hoped, but it is difficult to believe that Trump’s presence was not a conversation with potential partners.

In other words, it may have been the money that brought the tour from Dorel, but Trump also mattered.

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To a wider level, the same reasoning can be used to explain the tournament rETurN to Doral. The tides have returned to Trump in the first year of his second presidential term, with Wall Street and large technology executives regularly by pilgrimages to the Oval Office to favor Curry. The President, meanwhile, has has federal power run In a way it matches a few leaders in American history, throwing no aspect to support what he sees useful for the cause.

For most of the last four years, Golf’s president’s most friendly supporters can be found in Liv. His golf properties received millions of tariffs on SIT from the Saudi -backed League in exchange for tournaments held in Trump’s courses in Miami, New Jersey and Washington, DC, on the other hand, enjoying a cozy relationship with the president, drafting the presence of the Commander -in -Chief in the events of the League.

The first sign of a change in that relationship reached February when Trump hosted leaders of both rival golf tournaments for the White House peace negotiations. After that meeting, Monahan issued a Press release in an unusual flattering in which he thanked the president for his involvement. Nearly six months to a day, the tournament announced his decision to return to the President’s property. Of course, the decision was not mainly for Trump – it was about PGA Tour’s behavior in an environment where the Golf Tournament made sense and could make money – but again, Trump mattered.

It is a miracle to witness 180 that has happened to Trump only in a 10 -year space in Pro Golf. A decade ago, he was deserted by PGA Tour. Five years ago, the PGA champion suddenly took a trip to Bedminster after January 6. A year ago, he appeared in a video campaign “Breaking 50” along with Bryson Dechambeau. Today, he is receiving the prime minister’s billing from the tour – and harassing a visit to the next month’s Ryder Cup, which takes place from the US PGA.

Traveling from PGA Tour outcast to sign the status of the event cannot be explained by politics alone. In many ways, the story of one of the most polarizing figures of our time.

But the story of Golf in Doral has never been difficult to understand. Always – and only – go down money.

And even for the president, cash is king.