Our man the Shark has long known the power of his brand, long known that by whacking “Greg Norman” on hats and houses, wine and wagyu beef, such commodities as rib-eye steaks will up and walk out the door, as if on their own four legs, as if reanimated.

Unlike Jack Nicklaus, whose Golden Bear Inc. nearly went bust investing in projects in the 1980s, Norman’s genius is that he doesn’t stump up any of his own money. Just as he need not know the intricacies of fermenting pinot noir nor in vitro-fertilising grain-fed heifers, sear the Shark brand into a hunk of meat and it can go from counter meal T-Bone to “classic American cut enhanced by the Japanese genetics of Wagyu cattle”, and retail on his website for $US109 per steak. (Yep – each).

And yet, like his dabble with “The Shark Experience” – effectively golf carts with the internet – Norman has never, not really, not yet, been able to sell his one great legacy dream: a world tour of golf. Though given he plans to live until he’s 115, there is still time. 

Norman first plumped for it in 1994 but the establishment shot it down. Ho-ho-ho! Steady on their, chief! Don’t get too far ahead of your skis. Tim Finchem and the PGA Tour didn’t want to share the money pot. Didn’t want to give up hegemony. Didn’t see a world tour for an elite claque of top players as ‘complementary’ to their own thing. They saw it as competition.

They also didn’t care about the ‘world’. America is the world. America’s business mores lean to muscular capitalism which means, as Tony Montana said in Scarface, words to the effect of “screw you”. No time with losers, we are the champions, and we aren’t going to share. What are you, a communist?

When Norman’s mentor Arnold Palmer spoke out against the ‘rebel’ tour, that was effectively it, and the pair had a falling out. They made up, though, and the Shark swam onwards, ever-hungry, for burlier waters. And he never stopped believing.

And the future is, sort of, now for the Shark because today LIV is, arguably, say-what-you-will-about-it-everyone-does-etcetera, a global tour with 14 tournaments a year across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Mexico and the dear sweet United States.

How long it will last beyond 2024 – and whether Norman will be at the helm – remains anyone’s guess, however.

For mine, the Saudis will keep LIV living and with Norman as front-man indefinitely. They’ve invested so much financial, political and egotistical capital in the project, it would hurt them too much to kill it. And they would believe that their partnership, merger, whatever it is, with the PGA Tour can co-exist with Norman and with LIV because they’ll run that show, too. Norman will tell you that golf is an “ecosystem”, and that there’s pie for all.

Golf Australia magazine met the man recently at the launch of a $144 million housing estate in Gledswood Hills, near Camden, south-western Sydney, that Norman was helping to sell and which is called, of course, Norman Estates.

Norman says he's happy running LIV Golf and leaving merger negotiations to PIF. PHOTO: Getty Images.

The familiar figure of the man arrived via helicopter before striding, aquiline nose first, into the estates’ residents’ recreation area. Wearing a crisp white shirt tucked into dark khaki cut-off ankle pants and matching green loafers, a pretty cool look and perhaps that befitting a younger man – but Norman carried it off. The hair may be receding a touch but it’s still in-part blonde, and he looked as fit and vigorous a 68-year-old man as there may be in the world.

After mercifully short speeches from political dignitaries and the property developer from Japan, Norman stood and held court in a room of politicians, realtors, media and PR types, delivering an off-the-cuff speech which didn’t miss a beat about how impressed he was by the homes’ Japanese craftsmanship, and Finnish timber, and a ride he had had in an earthquake simulator.

The more he talked, the more you wanted to live there – no mean feat selling Sydneysiders on semi-rural suburbia north of Campbelltown. Later he pored over big diagrams like a general, talked to media on TV, and did a typically good and practiced job of Being Greg Norman.

When it was Golf Australia magazine’s turn to sit opposite the man in a comfy chair in the Norman Estates’ display home, he fixed us with those piercing, blue, bull-shooter’s eyes, and offered no pleasantries. I’d written a book that he’d provided the foreword for and had been declared “LIV-friendly media” at the bottom of an email someone didn’t delete. I’d half-expected rapport, even banter with the man I’d never met but had deified since 1978.

But it was business time. He sat down and looked at me. We only shook hands because I stood and introduced myself, to which he replied, “Yes.” So, I sat back down, pressed record and got straight into it.

Question: “When did you last have a chat with the governor of the PIF, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, about what the future holds for LIV Golf and for you?”

Norman: “I’m in touch with him almost on a daily basis.”

Question: “And what’s been the nature of those conversations about LIV and the future?”

Norman: “I’m not going to talk about our personal, private, business stuff that we talked about. I just have my job and my responsibilities about what I’m going to do for LIV. And that’s what I’ve done, very successfully, for 22 tournaments.

“And that’s what I will continue to do going into the future because we’ve proven that our platform and our product has been accepted. It works. And it can coexist with the current ecosystem and the game of golf. And I’m not going to change, I’m just going to keep going.”

It beggars belief Norman would not have asked Al-Rumayyan and/or other senior types about the future of LIV Golf in terms of the PIF’s funding of the PGA Tour, particularly given PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is chief of a third-party LLC ‘NewCo’ and reportedly in charge of deciding on the fiscal viability of LIV Golf and by extension Norman himself. Norman, surely, wants to know what’s doing, right?

Norman insists he’s keeping his role delineated. He is but the humble chief executive and commissioner of LIV Golf league. What Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund does in partnership with the PGA Tour and Monahan is, according to Norman, outside his purview.

“I’m not involved with those negotiations. I’m not. I mean, you … I’ve said this all along. I have my job running LIV. And the PIF, our investment arm, is investing into LIV. So, I’m doing my job over here and I have nothing to do with that negotiation.”

It’s well within the realms of possibility that Norman doesn’t know because the PGA Tour and PIF haven’t worked it out yet. The PIF purse holders didn’t tell him that Al-Rumayyan was going on television with Monahan until shortly before they did. As one leading LIV player-manager told Golf Australia magazine: “No-one knew anything then and no-one knows anything now.”

The day after our chat LIV Golf announced the date for the Adelaide event, the league’s most successful one, even its flagship. It was an event that promoters, investors, private equity, money, around the world would have looked at and thought: how do we get us some of that. South Australia’s Premier Peter Manilauskas gave his people bread and circuses. And they loved it.

Norman with LIV Adelaide drawcard Cam Smith & S.A Premier Peter Manilauskas. PHOTO: Getty Images.

Norman has long said LIV Golf, like his world tour years ago, can complement the PGA Tour. Give the man his due: it’s actually happening.

“Our players are playing in different places around the world. They play in the Middle East. They play in Asia. They’re up in Hong Kong. They’re coming down to play in Australia. These guys are independent contractors. They have a right to go play wherever they want to go in the world,” Norman says.

Asked was he surprised that Monahan instantly went to the mattresses when Norman first broached LIV Golf, Norman says he can’t comment. And then he does anyway.

“Look, he’s made his decision. He’s probably regretting making those decisions, to be honest with you. But, you know, at the end of the day, they made their decision to do what they want to do. I’m over here doing what I need to do with LIV.”

And what’s that?

According to Norman, making golf realise the potential for tremendous wealth.

“For the first time in the game of golf, we’re looked on as an asset class. So, you have private equity investing in the game of golf. Private equity investing in the TGL (Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s indoor golf league), right?

“Who created all that? LIV. So all the players today, whether on the LIV Tour, or on the PGA Tour, or the DP World Tour, can thank the fact that we recognised that golf is an asset class.”

Asset class? This dumb sportswriter had to Google it. Seems it’s like stocks or bonds or real estate or a plane or a very big fishing boat. If you had $100 million in cash in an advanced savings account, that would count as an asset class.

“Our players don’t care about the OWGR, alright? Simple as that." – Greg Norman.

A better analogy for LIV Golf might be as a piece of art, as in beauty being in the eye of the beholder. The Mona Lisa is 77cm x 53cm and there’s some chance Leonardo da Vinci fluked the smile. But what’s it worth? How much would you pay? And what is LIV Golf’s worth? Is it tangible given Big TV’s response has been tepid, at best?

Norman, in his way, sees only positives.

“There is millions, billions of dollars being invested into golf, including into TGL, and all that stuff. Who’s the benefactor of all that? The players, the game of golf, the stakeholders, institutions, networks, everybody’s the benefactor of it,” Norman says.

“So, this animosity that’s been existing for the last 18 months about LIV, people should sit back and take a true, long, hard look at themselves about what is the true message they’re trying to deliver. Because the real message is that our platform absolutely is the right thing to do for the game of golf.

“The ecosystem does coexist between LIV and every other tour that’s out there.”

Norman also says he won’t comment on the apparent hypocrisy of those who criticised him and LIV Golf for taking money from the Saudi PIF and who now take money from the Saudi PIF.

“Oh, look, I’m not going to make a big deal of it. All I can say is: just be careful what you say in the beginning about what you don’t know.

“It was so simple for everybody to sit down and understand exactly what our platform was and what our mission statement was. And to understand it … it wasn’t a hard thing to do.

“And then by not doing that you pre-judge. And when you pre-judge you can make yourself look like a fool and nobody else, right?

“If you’re in the world of business, you sit down and understand what the other side has to offer.  You might want part of it, you might want nothing of it, you might want all of it. But at least you know what’s there and what the opportunity, or lack thereof, is. And you make the decision off the knowledge that you know you don’t make comments or decisions on zero knowledge,” Norman says.

Around new players for LIV in 2024, we ask: “Who is LIV talking to and is one of them Jon Rahm?”

“We’re in negotiations with players as we sit here and speak,” Norman says.

“How many are there?” we ask.

“I’m not going to answer that,” Norman replies flatly.

We do know that LIV Golf was dealt a blow when the R&A, USGA, PGA and Augusta National, to wit the bodies that run the Official World Golf Rankings, which decides on entry into major championships, didn’t grant LIV Golf ranking points.

The OWGR said that while it’s patently clear many LIV players are world class players, the league’s lack of meritocracy governing those coming in and going out holds water. Entry to LIV league has, thus far, been by invitation and there are underperforming players who can’t be kicked out of it because they’re contracted to stay.

Put that to Norman and there’s the barest hint of pique. “Our players don’t care about the OWGR, alright? Simple as that.

“Our players who are exempt for majors, they’re exempt for majors. Our strength of field speaks for itself. Brooks Koepka won a major championship this year. Cam Smith has high performance in majors. Brooks nearly won the Masters this year. I can go down the list with other players as well who performed extremely well.”

What next? There’s a good chance Norman doesn’t know. He was as blindsided as anyone when the PIF got into bed with Monahan and the PGA Tour. And if the Saudis had since told him his gig was secure for the next two, five, seven years, would Norman not have told everyone? Or can’t even he sell that?