{"id":356028,"date":"2025-12-18T12:23:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/356028\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T12:23:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:23:19","slug":"greg-norman-sends-message-to-pga-tour-stars-who-snubbed-liv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/356028\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg Norman sends message to PGA Tour stars who snubbed LIV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tReflecting on his time as LIV Golf CEO, Greg Norman has suggested the top PGA Tour stars have him to thank for changing the game\u2019s landscape\u2026<\/p>\n

He was the Great White Shark on the fairways, but these days Greg Norman would much rather be known as golf\u2019s \u2018Great Disruptor\u2019.<\/p>\n

The 70-year-old is now almost a year removed from his role as LIV Golf\u2019s top boss after being replaced by Scott O\u2019Neil<\/a> in January. His LIV contract officially expired in August, and since then the Australian has split his time between his golf design business and on the committee for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane.<\/p>\n

But Norman\u2019s lasting impact as LIV\u2019s founding CEO, and indeed the league\u2019s firebrand who helped poach some of the PGA Tour\u2019s biggest names with big-money contracts to cause such unprecedented disruption in the corridors of power, is undeniable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With no signs of a reunification with the traditional tours, LIV is still ploughing its own furrow with backing from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, attempting to establish Norman\u2019s vision for a global tour.<\/p>\n

The PGA Tour, meanwhile, has been forced into a complete rethink of its own structure to safeguard the circuit from LIV\u2019s threat. In return for resisting the league\u2019s overtures, top players have been rewarded with a slice of the $1.5 billion equity in a new commercial entity called PGA Tour Enterprises.<\/p>\n

External investment has come from the Strategic Sports Group<\/a>, a conglomerate of US-based sports team owners, to the tune of $3bn. After being blindsided by the covert \u2018framework agreement\u2019 with LIV\u2019s backers in June 2023, the elite stars also now yield significant influence over how the circuit operates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Such tangible player power was what the two-time major champion Norman always craved in his own spectacular playing career. And he believes that as a direct result of LIV\u2019s emergence, players across both sides of the divide now finally \u201ccontrol their own destiny\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a disruptor,\u201d Norman told Mark Bouris on the Straight Talk Podcast.<\/a> \u201cI see weaknesses.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Norman\u2019s long-lasting frustration during his own playing days was that he lacked control over his own earning potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was unfair to the players,\u201d he added. \u201cNot just to Greg Norman in the day, but to everybody. You think if Jack Nicklaus had his own IP when he first came out there, and Arnold Palmer, they\u2019d be billionaires.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yet, here today, the institutions are making a lot of money. Now, with LIV, I gave the players that opportunity, and look at what\u2019s happened to the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat LIV did was it brought private equity into our sport. The first time ever in 54 years outside money got invested in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat created an ROI, an opportunity to invest in production, marketing, hospitality, entertainment, fandom, all these new places popped up, innovation, because of the investment dollars that came into LIV, that\u2019s where we put it, right? We had to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norman\u2019s legacy is complicated by his LIV involvement, but he clearly has no regrets from his time in the eye of the storm. In fact, he\u2019s gained satisfaction from dramatically shifting the landscape, even if he is no longer involved.\u00a0But there is still one thing that irks the two-time Open champion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that bothers me the most about it is the perception that I was trying to destroy the PGA Tour,\u201d he added. \u201cThat is the total opposite.\u00a0We were trying to work within the ecosystem. Competition is a wonderful thing. LIV was entertainment, concerts, different hospitality, music \u2013 all that stuff, plus teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the ecosystem was crying out for that, to have a counterbalance, and we proved it right.\u00a0But the general public, or perception from the media who probably had to take the tact that they had to take for certain reasons, created this angst out there in the world of golf.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reflecting on his time as LIV Golf CEO, Greg Norman has suggested the top PGA Tour stars have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-356028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}