Greg Norman says LIV Golf is not 'going anywhere'

Greg Norman isn’t giving up on LIV Golf despite the Saudi-backed tour’s merger with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour Tuesday.

The former PGA Tour star turned LIV Golf CEO told staffers on a 30-minute call Wednesday that the league “isn’t going anywhere.”

“LIV is and will continue to be a standalone enterprise,” Norman said, per Bob Harig of Sports Illustrated. “Our business model will not change. We changed history and we’re not going anywhere.”

Norman added that work is already being done on the 2025 schedule. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, meanwhile, said Tuesday he didn’t see a scenario where LIV Golf would exist next year alongside the PGA Tour in its current format.

“I can’t see that scenario. But, I haven’t gotten the full evaluation. The full empirical evaluation of LIV that I’m going to do to be able to comment on that. But I don’t see that scenario, no,” Monahan said. “To me, any scenarios that you’re thinking about that bridge between the PGA Tour and LIV would be longer term in nature.”

Rory McIlroy, a staunch critic of LIV Golf who remained loyal to the PGA Tour over the past calendar year, echoed Monahan’s sentiments.

“I would say an element of team golf might still stay,” McIlroy said. “My hope is it won’t be under the LIV umbrella. It will hopefully look very different to what LIV has been. It’s not LIV. I still hate LIV. I hope it goes away. And I fully expect that it does. … It’s very different from LIV. I’ve tried to protect what the PGA Tour is and what the PGA Tour stands for. There may be a team element, but I don’t think it will look anything like LIV has looked. And I think that’s a good thing.”

Will Greg Norman have much involvement in PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger?

Norman, the former world No. 1 and two-time Open Championship winner, notably was absent from the official news release announcing the merger. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), hardly mentioned Norman during his CNBC interview Tuesday. Al-Rumayyan revealed he delivered news of the merger to Norman just prior to going on air.

“I made a call just before this and of course he is a partner with us, and all the stakeholders that we have with us they had the call right before this interview,” Al-Rumayyan said.

Harig said in his initial report that Norman has been more of a “figurehead” of late, and was “not expected to be part of the venture going forward.”