Talking about that Greg Norman vanity project from 1994…
For some of the backgroundanalia about the LIV versus the world of golf tiff, a lot of the angst beyond the funding by the Saudi’s (so called “sportswashing”) for myriad and various reasons-not the least of which is the sentiment of the 9-11 victims’ families-is the man at the heart of the problems, Greg Norman.
Norman-a golfing personality who was a great player-about single-handedly brought about major changes in golf such as the establishment of an Official Word Golf Ranking (OWGR) system in 1986 to replace the somewhat marketing ratings that were most notably produced by Mark McCormack who represented a number of top golfers such as Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Norman was a prolific entrepreneur who built his golf earnings and image into a business juggernaut along the lines of the established tradition of many great golfers, including Beh Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tiger Woods.
Setting aside the controversy surrounding the Saudi Arabia funding, Norman is somewhat of a controversial figure from many views. Acknowledged as a great player on the world stage, he was the number one player in the world for a total of 331 weeks in the 1980s and 1990s. He is perhaps best known in the United States (US) and PGA Tour world as the “greatest player never to win a US major,” a dubious and unique moniker that accrues to those who dominate the game but are somewhat snakebit when it comes to the majors or PGA Tour titles in general. Norman won some 20 US PGA Tour events and two British Opens, as well as winning in dominant fashion the informally recognized “fifth major,” The Tournament Players Championship (TPC,) while winning a total of 88 tournaments around the world.
Many believe Norman’s greatest attribute as a golfer was self-marketing. He is perhaps best known for near misses in pursuit of the other majors, particularly in 1986 where he inspired the so-called “Saturday or Norman Slam,” holding the 54-hole lead in each of the 4 majors but only managing to close the deal on the British Open. Norman is the only player in golf history to lose playoffs in each of the major tournaments. His collapse at the 1996 Masters Tournament where he entered the final round with a 6-shot lead before losing to Nick Faldo by 5-shots after shooting a disastrous 78 was shocking. In golf the term for this-choking-was most notably a phrase that only dared to be uttered by the great Johnny Miller.
It is somewhat an unacknowledged fact that the LIV-54-title stems from what many have come to derisively call the “sham slam” that invokes analogies to horseshoes and hand grenades (as in ”close is only good in...”) He has been the subject of some ridicule over the years having somewhat created his own nickname-and then reportedly undertaking a fishing expedition to validate his self-anointed “moniker” as “the Great White shark,” which is typically shortened to the “Shark” but has also drawn derision by those who replace it with the term “Carp.”
Despite Norman’s impressive reputation, he ranks tied for 36 in terms of PGA Tour wins highlighted by a TPC win, and his two British Opens place him tied at number 47 in terms of golf major wins, while his 14 wins on the European Tour rank him as T20th all time. When he was in form, he was one of the greatest competitors of all time and dominated golf courses, often acknowledged by players like Jack Nicklaus as one of the straightest, longest drivers of the golf ball ever.
LIV was not Norman’s first foray into “meddling” with what has become somewhat of the golden goose called the US PGA Tour. His previous effort in 1994 was shut down by no less a golf personality than the King himself, Arnold Palmer, whose judgement in response to Norman’s proposal of a “world Tour” was “it was not good for the game nor the players who will be left behind” and he therefore would not endorse his idea.
The PGA Tour is the standard by which professional golf is measured and has been the aspirational career goal-and litmus-by which the best players in the world have been heretofore judged. One of the features of the PGA tour as it has developed over the years is best described by the attribute of “cushiness.” Players-particularly top players-are pampered like the golfing idols they are, with comped rental cars, discounts on hotel rooms, lavished with special fitness centers, club repair services on grounds, and myriad labyrinth like access controls to maintain separation from the adoring-but often unruly public.
The US PGA Tour evolved over the last hundred years or more from a hard scrabble, non-sustaining lifestyle from the early part of the last century-through the 1930s to post-World War II, to a more normal business approach emphasizing standards, sustainable purses and a modern entrepreneurial endeavor. The original roots of the tour were somewhat akin to baseball’s barnstorming style, where the tour would come to town and sponsor all manner of ancillary events to gather public interest in an attempt to help promote gate receipts to contribute to the tournament purse. The purses barely paid a living wage-and that only to the top ten or twelve golfers who consistently played the best each week.
Throughout the 1920s right up to the 1950s many professional golfers had to maintain Club Pro jobs at home to augment their income because they could not survive on tournament golf winnings alone. There were various iterations or modifications that settled-in the 1960s-to a more egalitarian-some would say socialist approach-with a construct that initially focused on the top 125 players who earned PGA Tour cards and were therefore afforded some normal semblance of schedule priority throughout the year.
The exception was the majors where players would originally qualify through a near dizzying array of rule sets that varied with each of the 4 majors. For instance-the Masters-being independently run by the Augusta National Masters Tournament Committee-largely accommodated the governing bodies represented by the Royal and Ancient (R&A) and the United States Golf Association (USGA,) while reserving the right to do their own thing by inviting-for instance-leading golfers from tours around the world, including amateur champions from other countries.
The notion of rankings in golf-rating the top players-was somewhat relegated to the press for decades but was complicated to a great degree by the separation of amateur and professional golf that saw separate and distinct treatment between the two that “roiled” right up through the 1950s. When Robert Tyre “Bobby” Jones, Jr. won his Impregnable Quadrilateral in 1930 he was acknowledged as the greatest golfer alive at the time through no small measure of the impressive marketing of his somewhat personal “scribe” Oscar Bane (O.B.) Keeler-better known as Pops, but in truth Jones’ unsurpassed feats in golf stood on their own merit. Jones’ legacy includes founding the Masters Tournament at the iconic Augusta National Golf Club in 1934 and his lifelong association with the Atlanta Country Club that hosts the PGA Tour FEDEX Cup Championship yearly. Jones was a career amateur who often struggled in play against the best professionals of the day.
Even with todays ease of travel and transport, the miracle work done through physical fitness, the team approach where golfers routinely talk about “we” competing for golf victories, Jones accomplishment of winning the US and British Amateur, and the US Open and the Open (British) Championship in the same year is astounding: impossible.
When Ben Hogan won three of the four professional championship majors in 1953, he was unable to compete in the PGA Championship because it took place at the same time as the Open Championship-which he won in his only try-the only time he played in the British Open.
Not to be outdone Tiger Woods won the so-called “Tiger Slam” when he won the 2000 US Open, The British Open, The PGA Championship and the 2001 Masters Tournament to become the only golfer ever to hold all four Major Titles at one time. The surprise was that many opined that it was not the professional version of the “Grand Slam” because it had not happened within the same calendar year. Tiger-when asked about it-pointed to his coffee table and replied “All I know is that I have all four trophys.”
Golfers in general-particularly professionals-had somewhat of a hustler reputation for much of the first half of the 20th century, where they weren’t allowed in many of the club member locker rooms that were hosting professional tournaments. This was brought to light most notably by the great Walter Hagen, who prominently parked his often-resplendent conveyance outside the hosting golf club, making somewhat of a show of his appearance to play at a club where he was not welcome in the clubhouse. He would often show up in the tuxedo he had worn the night before while enjoying a “lively” lifestyle in pursuit of his dream to “live like a millionaire, rather than to be one.”
The amateur vice professional debates lasted right up to the 1950s, perhaps best captured in a book by Mark Frost called “The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Change Forever” that described and finally put to bed the long rumored golf match that took place at Cypress Point in January 1956 between Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward, the best professional and amateur golfers of the day (although Nelson had been “retired” for nearly ten years, while Hogan had reduced his professional golf outings to less than a dozen a year: both were pretty much ceremonial golfers, although they could still play.)
Of relevance to the long running amateur-professional golfer debate in America is that the then caddy-10-year-old Eddy Lowery-for Francis Ouimet when as an amateur he won the US Open Championship in 1913 defeating British professionals Ted Ray and Harry Vardon in a playoff, was a long time sponsor of amateur players and ran afoul of the USGA rules through his somewhat “generous” salary agreements and loose “auto salesman” requirements. Lowery sponsored amateur golfers throughout his life enabling them to compete with mostly foreign state sponsored golfers, particularly from Great Britain.
Ouimet committed to be a life-long amateur. However, he was stripped by the USGA of his Amateur status in 1916 when he “touted his 1913 US Open victory” to aid his golf business, thereby demonstrating that he was a professional. His amateur status was “quietly” reinstated after his service with the Army in World War I. For a long time, the USGA required caddies to declare as professionals upon reaching age 16, which put them in somewhat of a different status where golf clubs would not employ them, which was a contributing factor to Ben Hogan deciding to turn to professional golf well before his game was ready to do so.
Max Dribbler
16 July 2025
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