Donald Trump to play round with Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson ahead of LIV Golf event

By Ben Morse, CNN

Updated 0835 GMT (1635 HKT) July 28, 2022

Former US President Donald Trump talks with Dustin Johnson during the welcome party for the LIV Golf event at Bedminster.

(CNN)Former US President Donald Trump will play a round with Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson ahead of the LIV Golf event which begins on Friday.

The third event of the controversial Saudi-backed tour is being played at Bedminster, New Jersey, which is a Trump-owned course. A source with LIV Golf told Reuters that Trump and his son Eric will tee up with 2020 US Open winner DeChambeau and two-time major winner Johnson during the Pro-Am on Thursday ahead of its first round which starts the next day. The LIV Golf tour has been criticized widely for offering vast swathes of money from Saudi Arabia, a country with a dismal human rights record, for players to leave the traditional golf tours. Earlier this month, Trump told golfers that they should join the LIV Golf series and «take the money now.»Read MoreTrump drives a golf cart at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.«All of those golfers that remain 'loyal' to the very disloyal PGA, in all of its different forms, will pay a big price when the inevitable MERGER with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big 'thank you' from PGA officials who are making Millions of Dollars a year,» Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday.«If you don't take the money now, you will get nothing after the merger takes place, and only say how smart the original signees were.»His comments come as a 9/11 survivors' group has said it is «appalled» by the «offensive, disrespectful and hurtful» LIV Golf tour ahead of the New Jersey event being staged about 50 miles (80km) from the site of the deadly terror