Before Greg Norman decided to go all in on a new golf league that, eventually, transformed the sport, he sold all his property in the United States, including a home on Jupiter Island, Florida, and was preparing to move back to his native Australia.
Then the tour that would become known as LIV Golf happened. And Norman was back in the home-buying market.
Now, about two years later, Norman, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, may be looking for a buyer for that new home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and headed back to Australia for good.
As more details emerge of the transformational deal between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which owns LIV Golf, it appears Norman, the controversial public face of LIV Golf, is on the outs.
It was enough the man known as the The Great White Shark was cast aside during seven weeks of negotiations between PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s team and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Kingdom’s PIF. Norman, 68, was clueless as to what was happening and wasn’t told of the deal until minutes before the two sides went public.
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Now we’ve learned Monahan will oversee both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf when the agreement is finalized.
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That means the man Norman has verbally sparred with and threatened the last year has final say on the new venture, including if any of LIV’s concepts are integrated and the reinstatement of LIV players like Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson to the PGA Tour.
Norman’s role? Considering his motivation behind LIV was his disdain for the PGA Tour that goes back years, the likelihood he has one is remote.
These two paragraphs in a Sports Illustrated report says it all:
- The PGA Tour will still be called the PGA Tour, but now commissioner Jay Monahan also oversees LIV Golf, and the PGA Tour remains a partner of the DP World Golf Tour. Monahan has told Al-Rumayyan they will evaluate LIV at the end of the year.
- If Monahan wants to disband LIV, he can. If LIV golfers want to play on the Tour, Monahan and the current PGA Tour leaders have to approve the terms. Monahan has banned them; it is presumed that penalties to return to the Tour will be significant.
Yet, Norman was taking a victory lap soon after the deal was announced. According to reports he gathered employees on a conference call and telling them:
“Congratulations! You changed golf, and you did it in less than a year. There will be no operational changes in 2023, 2024, 2025 and into the future. LIV is a stand-alone entity and will continue to be that moving forward. And that comes right from the top.”
LIV Golf remained largely irrelevant
JimmyDunne, the North Palm Beach, Florida, resident who Monahan credits as the man who was the architect behind the deal, believes LIV Golf never turned out the way Al-Rumayyan and the PIF expected. The league put its stake into team golf; and its 54-hole, no-cut concept was panned by golf traditionalists.
The one year anniversary of its first event was this month and LIV Golf continued to be dismissed and remained largely irrelevant with no significant sponsors and a toothless television contract with the CW Network. Each event was viewed as a exhibition, although a very profitable one for the golfers.
When Dunne, president of Seminole Golf Club who joined the PGA Tour’s policy board last year, reached out to Al-Rumayyan, the man behind LIV Golf was eager to talk.
“He was more about growing the pie and interest in the game, rather than ‘We’re gonna do it X way,'” Dunne told Sports Illustrated. “They have LIV, which, at some level, they’ve got to think was not what they hoped it would be. They have the ability to align with the PGA Tour, and that is meaningful to them. And that’s it.”
This is not to say LIV did not leave an imprint on the game. And this is where Norman can take a victory lap. LIV certainly got the PGA’s attention, which led to more money being pumped into the Tour by way of several events with a $20 million purse and the Player Impact Program.
When he told LIV employees “you changed golf,” he was not wrong.
The year-long Civil War certainly did not help the Tour’s, or Monahan’s, reputation. When Monahan told reporters, “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” he was right.
Still, LIV Golfers and Norman, have lost all leverage. Monahan has all the power. For the golfers, that means a very uncomfortable return to the Tour in which they will be cast as outsiders at first and suffer financial penalties while those who remained loyal benefit.
But for many who already have cashed in, it really won’t matter. They got what they wanted … a whole lot of money. Which was the reason they all joined LIV in the first place.
For Norman, it likely means the end of his decades-long pursuit to stick it to the Tour and the final chapter of his professional life being played out in Australia.
