With Saudi-pga deal, once-shunned crown prince makes dramatic move to extend kingdom's influence

WASHINGTON (AP) — After years of isolation over his human rights abuses, Saudi Arabia's crown prince is elevating his standing in the United States in part by diving into American sports, business and culture. And no example has been as striking as his bold entry into professional golf — the favorite sport of presidents and millions of other Americans.

Tuesday's surprise announcement of a commercial merger between Saudi Arabia's $650 billion sovereign wealth fund, the PGA Tour and the European tour in the short run looks to end a messy legal battle between Saudi Arabia's LIV Golf and the PGA.

But for the Saudis, it's much more than a major business deal. It's the latest and perhaps most dramatic move by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to wield his kingdom's oil wealth in reshaping his country's economy and advancing Saudi influence regionally and around the world, while muting critics. Prince Mohammed has assumed much of the duties and leadership of his aged father, King Salman.

The commercial merger followed the kingdom's purchase of the Newcastle United soccer team and staging of Formula One races and multiple other sports events.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's most prominent U.S. supporter celebrated.

Former president and current leading Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, whose golf courses and family have been a top beneficiary of Saudi investment, boasted that last year he had predicted a merger between Saudi upstart LIV golf and the PGA. Trump had warned pro golfers at the time they would lose millions if they stayed loyal to the “very disloyal PGA.”

A “big, beautiful, and glamorous deal,” Trump tweeted at the Saudi-u.s. golf announcement. Trump's golf courses were snubbed by the PGA Tour after his followers' violent Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, while rival Saudi golf tour LIV patronized Trump courses, for undisclosed sums.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who in 2018 had promised a “tsunami” of opposition against the crown prince over Saudi Arabia's killing of U.s.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, tweeted the PGA-LIV tour merger was “beyond exciting.” He noted it could benefit the golf industry in his state of South Carolina.

Saudi exiles in the U.S. expressed disappointment. In the hours before the golf deal was announced, they had hosted a sparsely attended press call to try to bring attention back to the Saudi rights advocates, American citizens and family members still being held in Saudi prisons or banned from traveling.

“I think what the Saudi government has been noticing so far is that using money for sportswashing is working out for them,” said Abdullah al Oudh, whose father, a popular cleric, has been in prison in Saudi Arabia since publicly expressing hope that the crown prince would end a now-mended rift with another Gulf state, Qatar.

“They have used it once, twice, three times ... to just whitewash their crimes. And it's been working for them so far,” al Oudh said.

It all has marked a stunning turnaround in the global standing of Prince Mohammed, who became almost globally despised after the 2018 killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who had written of the crown prince's brutal ways.

The crown prince's aides and other Saudi officials killed Khashoggi after luring him to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The U.S. intelligence community concluded the crown prince had authorized the plot.

Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden pledged to make the crown prince a “pariah.” It's a phrase that has been repeated in almost every Western article about the two since.

World leaders for a time shunned Prince Mohammed, leaving him standing awkwardly alone at summits as other leaders shook hands and smiled for photos. Global businesses briefly boycotted Saudi conferences.

Coming on top of Saudi Arabia's invasion of neighboring Yemen, its failed blockade of neighboring Qatar, its brief detention of Lebanon's leader, and intensified detention and torture of rivals, journalists and rights advocates, the Khashoggi killing stained

Prince Mohammed's reputation, indelibly.

In the five years since, however, the crown prince has made his way out of isolation.

For starters, there has been no known repeat of high-profile killings like that of Khashoggi, whose apparent strangulation and subsequent dismemberment with a bone saw was recorded by Turkish surveillance.