Norman’s dream for a world tourcloser to fruition

Greg Norman is channeling Kerry Packer in his bid to realise an ambition he has held for decades.

Jon Rahm with Greg Norman. The Spaniard’s defection could be a turning point in golf’s bitter divide. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/LIV Golf)

The boardroom battle endures, but this week at least marked the end of golf’s war of words.

Rory McIlroy, the most strident anti-LIV voice of all, had been too “judgmental”.

He has now accepted that the Saudi circuit is part of the sport. It could be golf’s version of cricket’s Indian Premier League.

Hell, it could even be “fun”. Words are cheap in this most risibly overpriced arena, but Greg Norman was quick to hail them as the turning point.

The beleaguered PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) are still negotiating a deal to form a new commercial entity, and the golf calendar beyond 2024 remains a mystery. But with Jon Rahm’s exit for $US300m ($448m) and McIlroy’s softened stance, albeit with caveats, Norman’s decades-long quest for a world tour is gathering momentum.

While it seemed the LIV Golf chief executive had not listened to McIlroy’s precise appraisal of golf’s new landscape on a Sky podcast, the gist was grist to the mill. “We are on the right side of history, our players are on the right side of history, and all of us within the LIV worldwide organisation are on the right side of history,” he said.

Mighty crowded, perhaps, but there will always be room for McIlroy and others, because commercial clout outweighs any critique: see Phil Mickelson and “scary motherf***ers”.

“We should all sit back as we look to the future and say this turning point is the right moment in time to go out and capitalise on it,” Norman told LIV’s Fairway to Heaven podcast.

When the presenter told him how wonderful LIV was, Norman added: “Obviously Rory’s realised it. Maybe he’s had a conversation with Jon Rahm since he signed. I’m speculating, but maybe Jon gave him the information we gave Jon for him to come on board.

“It’s not easy for him (McIlroy) to fall on his sword and say, hey, we are on the right side of history, making those positive comments towards LIV from an innovation standpoint. It’s a very powerful testament.”

After all the off-stage machinations, this sword and wordplay had a vague Shakespearean feel. “Pluck off,” Mark Antony says, just before falling on his sword in one of the bard’s betrayal tales.

“F*** you,” McIlroy said of Mickelson on Netflix last year, but his more conciliatory remarks show how times are changing.

Norman’s added pleasure in hearing McIlroy strike the IPL analogy is down to seeing himself as a latter-day Kerry Packer. He says his old friend, who was at the heart of the one-day cricket revolution in the late 1970s, is “sitting on my right shoulder, steering me in the right direction”.

The comparison works to an extent. Packer also saw players as underpaid and had his innovations ridiculed. There was also bitter legal action but, at its core, World Series Cricket was about growing bank balances rather than a game. “Come on, we’re all harlots, what’s your price?” Packer said, when negotiating TV rights with the Australian Cricket Board.

The Packer pitch still rings true. Although the PGA Tour defence has been based on the triptych of history, tradition and legacy, why else would they have inflated prize funds to unsustainable levels to combat LIV?

Why would Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, get $US18.6m a year? Why would the PGA Tour pay players millions from a nonsense popularity fund? Why the secret appearance fees?

And why would LIV still be here? It has achieved a huge amount in only 22 events, but Norman knows that is not down to a deep-seated love of team golf or shotgun starts. “We have a single-source investor who wants to invest into the game of golf to extract an ROI (return on investment),” he said.

Now the PGA Tour is talking to both the PIF and an American consortium of investors.

“I hope this framework agreement takes place, because money is starting to flow into the game of golf from private equity. Alleluia,” Norman said.

People ultimately warmed to ODI cricket and its descendants. LIV’s numbers are yet to show a desire for the team format, but the players clearly enjoy it and there has been no hint of a post-merger rush back to the PGA Tour.

What this week has highlighted is that the Saudi golf project has become normalised to the point where pragmatism has replaced emotion. Nobody much mentions the murder of Jamal Khashoggi these days. Or the imprisonment of Salma al-Shehab. And as much as McIlroy’s backtracking was significant, so was Mickelson’s response to it. Lest we forget, in 2022, McIlroy was unsparing after an article revealed Mickelson as an architect of the breakaway tour. “Naive, selfish, egotistical, ignorant,” was the description.

Mickelson, then, may have enjoyed some schadenfreude at hearing McIlroy now saying that LIV had exposed flaws in the PGA Tour system.

Instead, he said: “This quote and the many others made by Rory probably weren’t easy to say. Let’s not use this as an opportunity to pile on. It’s time to let go of our hostilities and work towards a positive future.

“Rahm’s signing is turning into a bridge to bring both sides together. Until an agreement is reached it will be business as usual for both sides, but hopefully without the needless disdain.”

Make no mistake, McIlroy is not suddenly a LIV convert. Nor has he changed his tune on players who took legal action against their old tours. He is, though, resigned to whatever happens next.

As he pointed out: “You can say what you want, but at the end of the day you’re not going to change people’s minds.”

Norman’s claim that LIV is merely additive to the existing tours is about to be tested, but Saudi sportswashing, or soft power if you prefer, becomes harder to attack when you have held your own tournaments there.

That moral high ground becomes softer underfoot when court filings claim the PGA Tour funded 9/11 protests outside LIV events. The dropping of legal action in June benefited both sides.

It may still be the case that Tiger Woods and the other PGA Tour directors do a deal with the US-based Strategic Sports Group, which leads to billions of dollars being invested. If the separate talks with the PIF then come to nothing, we can expect a return to hostilities, but Yasir al-Rumayyan, the PIF governor, craves access to the American market. And beyond all that, the US Justice Department could yet scupper any agreement on competition grounds.

Meanwhile, frustration among players is palpable. “It’s all fluff,” Collin Morikawa said of PGA Tour updates.

For the moment, the majors are becoming increasingly prized jewels. They are the rare occasions when the best come together to shine, but even they are in danger of being tarnished by a rankings system that snubs LIV events.

It’s only words, but McIlroy and Mickelson have set the right tone if there is to be harmony in 2024.

The Times