PGA Tour ends decade-long absence from Trump-owned courses with Doral return in 2026 | PGA Tour

The PGA Tour will return to Donald Trump’s Blue Monster course in Miami next spring, ending an absence of decade in the places belonging to Trump.

The Miami championship, a signing event of $ 20 million scheduled for the first weekend in May 2026, will mark the 56th time that the tour has played in Trump National Doral but the first since 2016, the year when Trump won his first American presidential election. That year, the WGC-Cadillac championship was withdrawn from the station and moved to Mexico after Cadillac put an end to its sponsorship.

At the time, the press release of the time, Tim Finchem, stressed that the decision was “fundamentally a sponsorship problem” and not political, despite Trump’s incendiary remarks on immigration and his insistence, the tour punished him for his first American presidential race. “We appreciate the dollars for our players,” said Finchem in 2016. “We were unable to obtain sponsorship for Doral. From a golf point of view, we have no problem with Donald Trump. From a political point of view, we are neutral.”

Trump, who had spent $ 250 million by redeveloping the ownership of Doral, was unleashed publicly during the tour and joked that he hoped that the officials had “kidnapping insurance” for the new Mexican host city of the event. During the next decade, the Blue Monster fell from the PGA calendar and rather became a regular site for the Unistart Liv Golf series, serving as a centerpiece in the calendar of the league supported by the Saudi.

Now the course returns to a time of transition for the PGA Tour. The Miami championship extends the list of nine signature events and is at the heart of a crowded spring. Starting with the Masters in April, the players will face four signature events and two majors in a seven-week section, with only the Zurich Classic in New Orleans breaking the race.

“We are delighted to present the biggest players in the game in competition in the most emblematic golf places,” said Brian Rolapp, the new managing director of the tour. “Inspired by our players and our fans, we accelerate the evolution of the tour and inaugurate a new era of innovation on and out of the course.”

The Miami championship should secure a title sponsor before its beginnings. Its addition moves the opening of Mexico in the fall Fedexcup and removed the Barracuda championship in California, which had been played in front of the British Open.

Doral has been synonymous with PGA Tour Golf since 1962, when launched as Doral Open. He became a world golf championship site in 2007, but had a hard time maintaining sponsorship after the purchase of the property by Trump in 2012. The 2016 split was, according to the words of Finchem, pragmatic rather than political, although it coincided with the polarizing rise of Trump.