{"id":589290,"date":"2026-04-06T14:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T14:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/589290\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T14:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T14:47:13","slug":"i-have-no-respect-for-interestingly-stupid-nick-faldo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/589290\/","title":{"rendered":"I have no respect for interestingly stupid Nick Faldo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Norman says it with a laugh and acknowledges that Faldo was far from the only one who sent pelters in his direction when he was the chief executive tasked with launching the Saudi-funded breakaway league. Now much has changed, he says. Not least because of LIV having world ranking points and his successor, Scott O\u2019Neil<\/a>, having a berth on the top table.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoll the clock back 4\u00bd years ago, about all the anti-Saudi sentiment, and then you roll the clock to where we are today, where now the Americans and the Saudis are tight with what\u2019s going on in the Middle East,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing, no negativity. To be involved with it then, and to see where it is today, and the same people then are 180 degrees different today. So you think, OK, what was it all really meant to be? All this hostility towards us. I\u2019m smart enough to know to sit back, see that I was in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing, to be able to grow the game of golf. I\u2019m not allowed to tell you everything that happened and what was against us. But one day, when I\u2019m near the end, I might. It will be like the Watergate of golf.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018LIV did affect my business\u2019<\/p>\n

Norman insists he is delighted with how it has worked out since he left the role nearly 18 months ago. \u201cIt\u2019s all I wanted, free agency and the players to be treated better,\u201d he says. \u201cLook at the money in the PGA Tour, the private equity and everything and how big the prize funds are. That is down to LIV and nobody can deny it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it did come at a cost to Norman and his golf-course design business. Sometimes it is forgotten that Norman had built a multimillion-dollar business and was not exactly begging for a new role, never mind how huge the Saudi salary was. \u201cThose early years with LIV did affect my business, especially here in the United States. There was definitely a huge stain put on top of me because of all that propaganda and that hatred<\/a> and all that stuff that came with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, conversely, when I went overseas, in Asia and Australia and all those places, I was a hero. I go into places like Japan and Vietnam and I feel like I\u2019m more popular and recognisable today than what I was back in my day of playing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs crazy as that sounds, it\u2019s the validation of what the platform we took to the world, which was LIV. We were the ones who created that foundation, that bedrock of stability on a global footprint that allowed the rest of the world outside of America to see exactly the true value of golf, of team golf, of team sport.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Norman says it with a laugh and acknowledges that Faldo was far from the only one who sent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,2490,755,228289,1747,588,85,156,17202,14059,275075],"class_list":{"0":"post-589290","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-donald-trump","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-liv-golf-invitational-series","13":"tag-pga-tour","14":"tag-sport","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-standard","17":"tag-the-masters","18":"tag-top-story","19":"tag-us-content"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589290","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=589290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}