It was only on Sunday evening that LIV Golf, the men’s league awash in billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, met its greatest athletic triumph to date when 1 of its headliners, Brooks Koepka, emphatically won the P.G.A. Championship.

By Thursday morning, although, LIV’s road show had been reinfused with the political bent that has trailed the second-year circuit as it has convulsed expert golf: the loquacious, limelight-seizing presence of former President Donald J. Trump, who is hosting 1 of the league’s tournaments this weekend at a course northwest of Washington.

Whether or not LIV can outrun Trump’s shadow, and irrespective of whether it even desires to, could do substantially to shape how the league is perceived in the years ahead, especially in the United States, exactly where it has struggled to obtain a meaningful foothold against the PGA Tour.

But for now, apart from key tournament winners like Koepka and Phil Mickelson who have joined the circuit, there is likely no figure beyond golf additional publicly linked to LIV than Trump, who has repeatedly and enthusiastically cheered Saudi Arabia’s thunderous, flashy entrance into sports. At its events, he frequently appears like an eager M.C. whose part is at as soon as decidedly conspicuous and deeply mysterious — neither the Trump Organization nor LIV have disclosed how substantially funds the former president’s corporation is creating for the events — as the league appears to make inroads in a hidebound sport.

“They want to use my properties simply because they’re the greatest properties,” Trump mentioned on Thursday, when he spent 5 hours appearing in a pro-am occasion with the LIV players Graeme McDowell and Patrick Reed (and holding what amounted to a rolling news conference about politics and an infomercial about his home more than 18 holes along the Potomac River).

The Trump portfolio does certainly function some exceptional courses, like the Washington-location place, which as soon as held a Senior P.G.A. Championship, and LIV executives have mentioned in the previous that they had been drawn to them simply because a lot of prime-caliber properties in the United States had been not prepared to host a circuit intended to rival the PGA Tour. But Trump’s persistent, expanding spot in LIV’s orbit also invites sustained skepticism of the motives and intentions of the league, which some critics see as a glossy way for Saudi Arabia to rehabilitate its image.

The former president is unbothered by the league’s patron, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and the kingdom’s budding spot in expert golf, regardless of its record of human rights abuses. He is nonetheless casting aside objections from household members of Sept. 11 victims, some of whom think Saudi Arabia played a part in the 2001 attacks, simply because, as he mentioned Thursday, LIV tournaments are “great financial improvement.” He is openly admiring the millions and millions of dollars that the Saudis are raining down onto players and, of course, properties like his, even although he asserted Thursday that hosting tournaments amounts to “peanuts for me.” This year, LIV will travel to 3 of his properties, up from two in its inaugural season.

He has remained steadfast in his loyalty even although a unique counsel from the Justice Division, Jack Smith, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records connected to LIV.

In an interview as he walked involving holes on Thursday, Trump described Smith’s aggressive method as “retribution” simply because the Biden administration desires “to do a thing to take the spotlight off what’s taken spot.” He mentioned he did not know why his ties to LIV had drawn the unique counsel’s scrutiny.

Trump’s affection for LIV can be traced, at least in portion, to years of friction with golf’s establishment.

In 2016, the PGA Tour ended a longstanding partnership with Trump’s course in Doral, Fla., close to Miami, simply because of what its then-commissioner described as “fundamentally a sponsorship concern.” And in 2021, soon after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the P.G.A. of America — which is separate from the PGA Tour — abandoned its program to host its flagship men’s championship at a Trump home in New Jersey in 2022.

Trump has not fared substantially superior abroad. The R&ampA, which organizes the British Open, has signaled it does not intend to take the tournament back to Trump-controlled Turnberry, exactly where LIV’s commissioner, Greg Norman, won 1 of his two Opens.

LIV has embraced Trump, although, and in return gotten a former president’s imprimatur, along with bursts of news coverage for events that could possibly have gone unnoticed otherwise. He brings prestige and energy, diluted as each could possibly be by the divisiveness in which he revels.

“They have limitless funds and they appreciate it,” he mentioned Thursday, “and it is been wonderful publicity for Saudi Arabia.”

But for each and every day Trump seems at a LIV occasion, it is a day that LIV could possibly as nicely create off as 1 in which it will not escape the pointed concerns that it has spent a year attempting to move previous, or at least saying it desires to move previous.

It has been really hard sufficient for the league, even on a day when Trump is not playing a round, not to have its players confronting concerns about the morality of accepting millions in Saudi funds.

“We’re contracted to play golf,” Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open winner who completed in a tie for fourth at the P.G.A. Championship final weekend, mentioned on Wednesday. “I believe the most critical portion is to deliver wonderful entertainment wherever probable on what ever platform that is, what ever platform that supplies it. When you can speak about ethics, that is people’s perception. I fully disagree with it, but everyone has the suitable to their personal opinion, and I’d say, was it worth it? Certainly.”

But DeChambeau hardly has the identical megaphone or presence as a former occupant of the Oval Workplace. When Trump seems at a LIV occasion, even winners of the Masters Tournament or the U.S. Open are relegated to supporting actors.

LIV executives have usually brushed aside concerns about irrespective of whether the former president is very good for enterprise, or merely necessary for it, offered their troubles landing good quality venues. They look convinced that, at some point, sports will overtake politics, which could possibly be wishful considering given that Trump recommended Thursday that absolutely nothing — not even a return to the White Property — would simply dissuade him from undertaking enterprise with the league.

But LIV’s approach nonetheless entails a gamble that the presence of 1 of the nation’s most polarizing figures will not scare off even additional of the sponsorship contracts and tv rights that are currently proving really hard to come by for the operation. And Trump can just as simply alienate potential fans as he can entice them.

Trump himself insists that LIV craves him at its events and that he is not a distraction from the league’s proclaimed target of expanding the sport and providing it doses of required power.

“They wanted me to be right here, and I mentioned certain,” mentioned Trump, who mentioned that LIV’s contracts with his properties did not need his appearances in events like the pro-am.

Possibly all of that is correct. But as extended as it is, LIV will linger in the political thicket, no matter how nicely Koepka plays on the game’s largest stages.