‘Majors won’ is often a gauge of success when a player hangs up their clubs, but you shouldn’t judge Greg Norman by this metric.
The Australian won The Open twice, but it will be a mystery forever how the Claret Jug was the only major trophy he owned. He came second at least twice in each other major, sometimes in agonising fashion, but not that Norman will sniff at his achievements in the big four events.
His overall victory record is also vast. Norman’s worldwide win tally is in the triple figures, with success in Fiji, Japan, Hong Kong, and Canada, as well as across America and Europe. His well-travelled CV explains his long-term intent to create a world golf tour, an idea born in 1994 that eventually became a reality with LIV Golf in 2022.
Golf fans enjoyed watching Norman when he turned pro in 1976, battling with Faldo, Ballesteros, Couples, and Price with his iconic straw hat and powerful style. One of his contemporaries and LIV Golf colleagues David Feherty believes the Shark was the man before the man, before one of the greatest came along at the end of the 1990s.
“His fingerprints are all over this and always will be. People forget at times that before Tiger Woods, there was Greg Norman who brought that level of fitness,” Feherty told NCG. “The guy won more than 100 tournaments around the world. He was Tiger Woods before Tiger Woods.
“He was the most recognisable personality on the planet for a long time, with his long blonde hair and swashbuckling moves on the golf course. He’s an amazing character, larger than life and if he does take a different position within the organisation, his influence is always going to be felt no matter where he is in the organisation.”
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David Feherty: LIV Golf move was like ‘jumping on to a pirate ship’
His playing career saw gut-wrenching losses in his quest for more major triumphs but, even for someone who’s been through the mill and back again, becoming CEO of a Saudi-funded breakaway league and shaking up the entire sport has inflicted unprecedented levels of pressure and scrutiny on Norman.
Whispers have linked the 69-year-old with a shift away from the chief executive hot seat. Norman has ridden the wave of scepticism and shouldered calls for his resignation on numerous occasions, including from Woods himself and Rory McIlroy no less.
Since the first LIV event in Hemel Hempstead two years ago, Norman and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia have lured Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson with nine-digit fees to a concept never seen before in golf.
54 holes, shotgun starts, four-man teams and $4 million to the winner at every event. The PGA Tour and the DP World Tour were presented with an enemy they never thought would arrive. Feherty was another to leap into a lead analyst role, having reported from the course for NBC and CBS collectively for 25 years.
The popular Northern Irishman, a one-time Ryder Cupper and five-time winner on the European Tour, has admitted the financial incentive to join LIV was his prime motivation, but he also doesn’t downplay the risk each player and official took when joining a new golf league and stepping into the unknown.
“There was the money side of it as well which I was straightforward about from word one. They’re paying me a lot of money which is a lot of difference as well, but their (NBC) lead analyst job I’d always wanted,” Feherty said.
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“But when you’ve got major champions like Ken Venturi and (Nick) Faldo and (Paul) Azinger and (Johnny) Miller, it’s difficult for a player like me to sit in that seat and be thought of in the same way. But we think of golf differently at LIV, as much more of an entertainment (product).
“From the word go, there’s a cohesiveness to us at LIV and a camaraderie that I’ve never seen in previous experiences, either playing or broadcasting where we felt like we were taking a leap of faith to start with, and kind of jumping on to a pirate ship,” he added.
“But the players, the officials, the media. We all felt like we were in this together. We have access to the players, and they get it, they get that they’re part of the whole show and I think sometimes that gets lost in other tours around the world where players have a tendency to think the game revolves around them which it does to an extent, but the game is bigger than that and it has to be a show.
“They have that sense of brotherhood that’s out there and it extends from the players into the media and into the officials and hopefully into the fans as well.”
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