It’s reportedly business as usual at LIV Golf with Greg Norman telling staff that they are still planning for the future despite the bombshell dropped by the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF).
While PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan were sat side-by-side on TV announcing their shock agreement, Norman had only just been notified moments earlier.
The Australian, who led the LIV Golf revolution, is nowhere to be seen in the plans of this new golfing entity going forward – which will be under the PGA Tour name and including the DP World Tour and PIF.
What’s more, Monahan has said he’ll be conducting a review of LIV Golf himself, and does not see it running alongside the PGA Tour – although he did say he’d look to keep a team golf element in the schedule.
So, there are now plenty of question marks about the future of LIV Golf, but while Norman has not spoken publicly, Sports Illustrated’s Bob Harig quotes a person who was on the staff call saying their boss was insisting it was business as usual.
Norman is quoted by Sports Illustrated as saying: "LIV is and will continue to be a standalone enterprise. Our business model will not change. We changed history and we're not going anywhere."
And in fact, as some supporters have also said, Norman believes that the deal will now open the door for “blue chip sponsors” and TV networks to come forward and get involved.
The 2023 LIV Golf League has staged seven of 14 events on their schedule so far and will already have gone some way down the road in their 2024 planning.
With the announcement coming out of nowhere, everyone is in a state of limbo, but perhaps none more so than LIV Golf – the disruptors themselves who forced his seismic shift in the golfing world.
LIV Golf’s ultimate plan all along has been to eventually sell-off their 12 franchises for huge sums of money, pocketing some and handing some to the big-name team captains that helped drum up interest in the first place.
There are many questions to answer after the huge merger news, and just whereabout LIV Golf now sits in the list of the PIF’s priorities will be the main one Norman in particular will want answering.
