Even Greg Norman was out of the loop on Tuesday’s stunning PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund who will be the chairman of the new combined megatour, told CNBC Tuesday morning that he phoned Norman, the LIV Golf CEO, right before his television appearance.
“He is aware. I made a call just before this,” Al-Rumayyan said on CNBC. “Of course, he’s a partner with us. All the stakeholders with us had a call right before this interview.”
The Golf Channel also reported that Norman was not involved in the merger negotiations between LIV and the PGA Tour.
Norman has been one of the central figures of the PGA-LIV war, taking shots at PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan amid antitrust litigation between the Tour and the Saudi-backed league, while also ribbing players like Rory McIlroy.
Norman wrote a letter to Monahan last year after the Tour commissioner said defectors to LIV Golf would be banned from playing on the PGA Tour, which ended with, “this is just the beginning. It certainly is not the end.”
McIlroy and Tiger Woods both called for Norman’s ouster as LIV Golf CEO in November as the first step toward a detente.
Everything to know about the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger
PGA Tour and LIV Golf are ending a war — by joining forces.
The two golf leagues, along with the European DP World Tour, are merging into one company after a period of fierce rivalry, one where LIV Golf defectors were banned from competing on the Tour.
LIV, financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund and led by legendary golfer Greg Norman, lured some of the top names in golf last year with reported nine-figure contracts, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau.
Other huge golf names, however, like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, stayed loyal to the Tour, despite being offered a massive amount of money.
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Norman said last year Woods turned down a payday in the range of $700-800 million to stick with the PGA Tour.
With the merger, the Saudi-backed LIV and the Tour are ending an antitrust battle and agreed to end all litigation between the two sides.
“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA TOUR’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model.”
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“Greg’s got to leave and then we can eventually, hopefully, have a stay between the two lawsuits and figure something out,” Woods said at the Hero World Challenge on Nov. 29. “But why would you change anything if you’ve got a lawsuit against you? They sued us first.”
In an interview with The Post’s Mark Cannizzaro last July, Norman said he wanted to ultimately work with the PGA Tour.
“We have no intention to try to destroy the PGA Tour,” Norman said. “Every step of the way we’ve built our model to work within the ecosystem and give everybody the opportunity to work within that ecosystem. It’s pro golf. There’s such a simple solution, it’s ridiculous. I can’t talk about it, because it’s a process we’ve gone through with our legal team knowing everything that’s in the rules and regulations. But it’s not a hard fix, it’s really not. And the longer they do it (suspend players), the less we’re worried about it because we have more people coming in and wanting to invest.”
𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝘀, 𝗖𝗼𝗽𝘆𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 & 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘆: nypost.com
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