Foreword
Says Jacobsen today, "People have asked me a lot lately, 'Why is Greg Norman so angry? Why is he so bitter? Why is he trying to burn the PGA Tour to the ground?' I think a lot of it goes back to that moment, when his reputation got crushed." He chuckles and offers a rueful coda: "Off course, if Greg hadn't choked away the 1996 Masters, I don't think any of us would have ever heard of LIV Golf."
LIV is about many things besides golf, chief among them money, power, and politics. But there is a darker, more elemental force at work: vengeance.
1.
It has become common to call the LIV Golf era the most contentious period in professional golf history. This overlooks the fact that the PGA Tour was born of a rebellion fueled by secret player meetings, lawsuits, threats of suspension and boycotts, and very public recriminations. Ever since then, the PGA Tour has tried to sell a polished image of golfing gentlemen, but bitchiness and controversy will always be in the professional game's DNA.
2.
"He (Greg Norman) had two things that were always bubbling to the surface that needed controlling," said Marshall. "One was that he had a phenomenal ego, even at that age. Secondly, he was ultramaterialistic. Very impressed by money, very impressed by people who had money. Those, to me, were slight danger sings."
"It Tom hit a perfect drive that landed in a divot hole in the fairway, he would wink at me and say 'Hey, Bruce, watch what I do with this!' If the same thing happened to Greg, he would bitch and moan about his rotten luck. Then he'd hit a bad shot and pout about it for the next two holes. That's the fundamental difference between them." (by Bruce Edwards)
The messiness that had always surrounded Norman as a player and businessman spilled over into his life.
3.
As the European Tour lost its star power this century, the PGA Tour enjoyed a monopoly of competition: an endless slog of unimaginative seventy-two-hole strike play events; outdated telecasts with little innovation and an onslaught of commercials; erratic streaming services that made it difficult for even the most dedicated fans to tune in; social media offerings as analogue as a MySpace page.
"Had Rory said to me, 'Andy, that's rubbish,' I would've probably stopped. But on we went."
4.
もしEuropean Tour とPGLとのディールが成立していたら……
5.
Tyrannical politicians have been laundering their reputations through sports at least as far as back when Adolf Hitler presided over the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
7.
For most of his career, Dustin Johnson had been considered an extravagantly talented underachiever whose priorities were to make birdies, make money, and get laid, not necessarily in that order.
8.
According to three LIV golfers, Steinberg was initially offered the CEO position to run the entire operation, the job that Greg Norman ultimately took.
9.
The legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans liked to say, "There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth."
10.
The folks at LIV were clever enough to realize that their player needed media training ahead of their first tournament, but all of the flaks in the world, they somehow selected Fleischer. LIV desperately wanted to be seen as a sports league and not as a propaganda machine, but Fleischer was the most politically charged hire imaginable.
"Here's a guy who tweets about 9/11 and has been supercritical of Saudi Arabia, and now he's taking LIV's money? It would have been one thing if he had been established part of the PR rollout. But no, he was just sprung on us, like 'Live From London, with special guest star Ari Fleischer!'"
"Hopefully it reminds me of how you reached out to me in 2011, and I just want to say that I'll always appreciate it. It meant a lot. I know our opinion on the game of golf right now is very different, but I just wanted you to know that and wish you all the best." (Rory texted to Greg)
11.
"What you have to understand about professional golfers is that they are all whores," says a longtime agent. "That is the starting point."
In all, two dozen PGA Tour title sponsors have direct business ties to Saudi Arabia.
"You're telling me that the only job in the world that can't benefit from Saudi money is professional golfers? Get the fuck outta here."
12.
The Torque flew the flag for Japan and with Yuki Inamori, Ryosuke Kinoshita, Junichiro Kozuma, and Hideto Tanihara. Only the most relentless Gold Channel reviewer had heard of any of them, but LIV was still wooing 2021 Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama, and having fellow Japanese golfers for teammates was an important sales pitch for a player who still speaks limited English.
"I have entire trust in H," he says. "He'll say, 'You've got 158 [yards] front, 172 hole, 165 over this corner, wind off the left, give me a three-quarter six iron.' Bang. Done. He can see it more clearly than I can. With all the pressure and the nerves, it's easy to lose your head out there." (Pat Perez on his caddy, Hartford)
13.
We will never know the depth of his emotional pain, the shame and loneliness, the crushing weight of being Tiger Woods.
The pro-am was held at Adare Manor in County Limerick, a course and a castle on which McManus has spent a reported £100 million to transform it into the host venue of the 2027 Ryder Cup.
"Fuck all of those country club kids who talk shit about me," he said, referring to the likes of Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, and others. "You think I have a fuck what they think? You think I care what people say about me? I just had three surgeries, and I'm supposed to turn down $130 million? I grew up with nothing. After signing that contract, the first person I called was my mom. We both cried."
14.
Says Pelley, "I have worked with athletes for the better part of thirty-five years across multiple sports, and I have never been more disappointed by an athlete than I was with Henrik. What he did was massively disrespectful to the Ryder Cup and to all the players and captains who came before him and to all of our staff who had worked tirelessly with him."
The LIV—Trump nexis is easily explained: both have built their brands as oppressed underdogs, fueled by grievance, as they paradoxically tail against the elites.
15.
16.
We will never know what participated Wood's car crash—if it was a moment of madness, an attempt to end it all. Reshaping the Tour gave him a purpose and the human connection he needed on the road back.
(Keegan says) "I was pretty bummed not to be there. I was like, Jeez, I want to be thought of as one of those guys. It pissed me off, honestly. That motivated me to work a lot harder and I won shortly thereafter, and I don't think that was a coincidence."
"We knew that a franchise fronted by Hideaki Matsuyama with all Asian players would easily be the most valuable," says a LIV executive. "It would be the quickest to attract blue-chip sponsors. If we signed him, we would have played a tournament in Japan every year. He's not the sexiest player, but economically it would been massive."
None of their colleagues was particularly rankled that they had taken money; fellow pros understand that it's a business. But it was their litigiousness and lippiness—in the locker room, in press conferences, and on social media—that rankled.
17.
The dramatic tension came by way of Phil Mickelson's first visit to the kingdom since he had been quoted calling its people "scary motherfuckers." He channeled all of that anxiety into a relentless charm offensive. A fellow LIV golfer says, "If you think Phil is a bullshit artist normally, this was another level. You've never seen anyone kiss so much ass with that kind of enthusiasm and skill. He was 'on' from the second he got off the plane and never broke character."
18.
(A LIV executive says) "Everyone says the Saudis have unlimited money, but that's because they had made one clever more after another to grow PIF into what it is. Despite the narrative, they don't burn up money so recklessly. There is always a larger plan, and they will not stop until that plan is executed."
"Yeah, we've been telling him to stop trying to find a girlfriend on Instagram," says one of DeChambeau's teammates.
(Kevin Ma says) "There is a shit ton of money out there, and I already got a shit ton. If you play well, you're gonna win a shit ton more. I'm not worrying about the details."
19.
"This is beautiful," said the English reporter Kevin Garside. "We have a term for this sort of stuff: shithousery. This would be perfect golf shithousery all we need is Norman tweeting his congratulations from Mar-a-Largo to make it better."
20.
Both Dunne and Herlihy could see clearly what Monahan was too prideful to say out loud and what LIV's Pat Perez diagnosed in his inimitable way: "Their whole model is fucked because it is dependent on squeezing more and more money out of corporations that are already tired of getting squeezed. We don't have to worry about that out here. Our money comes out of ground."
21.
"Major championship golf is like the kill zone on Everest," says his swing coach, Claude Harmon III. "A lot of guys are comfortable at Camp IV—they can see the peak from there, but they don't want to suffer to get to the top. They're not willing to step over the dead bodies just for the chance to get to the summit. Brooks is comfortable in the chaos. Some guys are, some aren't. Tiger was, Phil was. Certain guys live for the chaos. Most are afraid of it."
22.
"It's time to start recruiting." A LIV executive went further, saying "Now we can finally get Hideki [Matsuyama] and Jon Rahm. I would say every big name on the PGA Tour will get an offer. Except Rory. Nobody wants that little bitch on their team."
A fellow player who has worked with Cantley in governance issues calls him "a terrific penis." Translation: He's a dick.
None of his critiques has been wrong in the merits of, but like another idealist—McIlroy—Chamblee failed to recognize that his side never had a chance. Money always wins.
The idea traveled all the way to the headquarters of the European Tour, and Phil Mickelson carried it furtively to various back alleys. The idea moved like a virus from the House of Saud to Ponte Vedra Beach, from the patio at the Bear's Club to the halls of Mar-a-Largo, from St. Andrews to the Seminole grill room and all the way to a California courthouse. It traveled to a cigar lounge in London, a restaurant in Venice, a burger joint in Omaha.
The idea became a mirror, an X-ray machine, a Rorschach test, revealing so much about so many. It was a simple idea, really: to make professional golf slightly different from, a tad more fun. The idea corrupted those with a list for power and a craving for gold. It was weaponized by politicians, pundits, dreamers, trolls, hucksters, and hypocrites. That little idea sparked a war—and a fragile peace—that changed golf forever.
