And come Monday, he’s primed to pass another benchmark previously accomplished by only two golfers.
When the Official World Golf Ranking updates Monday, Scheffler will be in the No. 1 spot for the 82nd consecutive week, breaking a tie with Nick Faldo for the fourth longest span of all-time. The only two golfers to spend more consecutive weeks atop the OWGR are Tiger Woods, who did it twice for 281 and 264 weeks, respectively, and Greg Norman, who was No. 1 for 96 straight weeks.
Scheffler is the 25th golfer all-time to reach No. 1, and he has held the position since May 21, 2023. With his massive lead in points, he’s not going anywhere for some time, either.
Next week will mark Scheffler’s 117th as No. 1 in the world, only five weeks behind Rory McIlroy’s 122, a mark he’ll pass in the middle of January. Dustin Johnson is next on the list, being in the top spot for 135 weeks, another mark that Scheffler is likely to top.
đ¨BREAKING
Most world ranking points earned in a calendar year since the inception of #OWGR:
Another feat Scheffler is bound to pass is Norman’s longest stretch on top of the world at 96 straight weeks. Because of how many average points Scheffler has between he and world No. 2 Xander Schauffele, the chances of him losing the top spot in the world in the early part of 2025 are slim to none, meaning he’s likely to become the second golfer ever to spend at least 100 consecutive weeks at No. 1.
As far as catching No. 1 on that list? We’ll check back in a couple years.
As mentioned above, Scheffler earned the fourth-most OWGR points in a single year in 2024, trailing only Woods’ 2000, 2005 and 2006 seasons.
Woods is by far the most successful golfer in OWGR history, with Norman a distant second. The 28-year-old Scheffler is closing in on third with arguably the prime of his career just starting.
Sure, objective reality says Norman has failed to deliver a significant audience, but …
Optics matter in business, and even moreso in our current polarized moment when believing is seeing, when any detail can be twisted in support of a bias we already hold. So it is with Jay Monahanâs compensation, which Sportico reported was just over $23 million in 2023, per PGA Tour tax filings. Nothing turns ardent capitalists into Bernie Bros quite like revelations about executive salaries, and reactions to Jayâs pay didnât disappoint. Whether Monahan actually deserves that money is a matter for the board that approved his package, and which presumably signed off on the bonus structure that accounts for the bulk of it. But to casual observers, it fits a drearily familiar narrative: people who bear at least some responsibility for the lousy state of golf (chiefly players, with executives a distant second) are earning more than ever while their business woefully underperforms by almost any reasonable metric.
Optics certainly doomed LPGA Tour commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who resigned on Monday. She can point to a handful of positives from her three years on the job, but Marcoux Samaan couldnât shake an unflattering perception that comes with botched logistics, poor relationship maintenance and dithering amid crises.
It would be easy to also cite optics for the reportedly imminent departure of another industry executive â Greg Norman, as CEO of LIV Golf â given his Comical Ali-style bluster in the face of failure that only grows more glaringly obvious with each flip of the calendar. But that would be a disservice to the flaxen-haired finger puppet, who has undeniably been successful in ways that his Saudi benefactors required.
Sure, objective reality says Norman has failed to deliver a significant audience, serious commercial sponsorship or a meaningful media deal for his product. But his dexterity in signing someone elseâs checkbook gave LIV the only market share it needed â enough competitively relevant players â and his inability to feel shame made him the ideal frontman to brazen out the initial disgust about sportswashing by authoritarian regimes. But while the Shark imagined himself a visionary, to his bosses he was a mere functionary. Like many a Saudi apparatchik before him, Norman has seemingly outlived his usefulness, though unlike others his severance probably wonât be literal, via bonesaw.
Normanâs eventual ouster will have nothing to do with job performance. Itâs simply preparatory for the next phase of the Saudi Public Investment Fundâs golf project. If there is a deal between the PIF and the PGA Tour, Norman is too toxic a personality to lead LIV into whatever cooperative new ecosystem takes shape. And if there isnât, well, itâs not like heâs been doing an outstanding job anyway. By comparison, his reported replacement, Scott OâNeil, is viewed as a sober and respected sports business leader, a chap without baggage who can work within any new arrangement.
So why would OâNeil take a position that might not exist in a couple of years? Either the pay is sufficient to justify the gamble, or the gig wonât be defunct. Bet on the latter.
Given antitrust concerns â regardless of who occupies the White House â LIV wonât be binned as part of a definitive deal between the PGA Tour and PIF. There will probably come a day when the Saudis cease funding their folly, but that isnât imminent. So, just as one must offer a chair to the most objectionable family member at Thanksgiving, a place will need to be found for LIV in whatever new reality emerges.
Several scenarios seem feasible. It could continue as a standalone tour; itsâŻteams could be folded into a new team golf component on the PGA Tour schedule while LIVâs player contracts fade out; or a combination of both. If a deal is struck and LIV continues as a separate circuit, then itâs likely to do so as an ex-U.S. enterprise, aligned more with the DP World Tour schedule and not competing with the all-important FedEx Cup season. Against that backdrop, consider a Bloomberg report (albeit one dismissed privately by some in Europe) claiming the DP World Tour and LIV are discussing a possible cooperative structure. Such talks would make sense as part of a three-way deal with the PGA Tour. Outside of a trilateral agreement, a LIV-European alliance would pose an existential threat to the PGA Tour. If the Saudis are platformed by a tour with world ranking points, legacy standing and a global presence, whatâs to stop every player unafraid of his passport from choosing to compete for huge purses at a select few DP World Tour stops?
In the absence of clarity in PGA Tour-PIF negotiations, everything is presumably on the table.
The continued existence of LIV isnât the ultimate prize for PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan. He wants access to team franchises with real value in the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL when rules are eventually loosened on sovereign wealth funds buying ownership stakes. Itâs not difficult to see how Al-Rumayyan and the PGA Tourâs existing investors in Strategic Sports Group are incentivized to be in business together. Gregâs dream is merely Yasirâs vehicle. In time, LIV will be viewed as no more than an inconvenient junk asset that needs to be parked until it is finally shuttered.
But optics also matter a great deal to Al-Rumayyan. For now, someone has to spare his blushes over having flushed several billion dollars on a farce. Someone has to facilitate a respectable disengagement over time from the LIV debacle. Someone has to provide an alternative avenue for his ambitions in golf. That someone is apparently Monahan, who finds himself having to simultaneously hold together a fractured boardroom, an underachieving organization and grousing members long enough to build Al-Rumayyanâs off-ramp. Perhaps heâs actually earning his money after all.
A former executive with the NHL and NBA appears ready to assume the post.
With Greg Norman’s turbulent reign as the CEO of LIV Golf in the rearview mirror, a new report indicates that a former executive with the NHL and NBA is ready to assume the post as the league enters its fourth season.
According to a report at Sports Business Journal, Scott O’Neil has been tabbed to take over the league, which disrupted the sport as a whole, but has yet to gain major traction in the sports universe.
O’Neill served as the CEO of the Philadelphia 76ers and then added a similar role above the New Jersey Devils as part of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment.
New Jersey Devils CEO Scott O’Neil. (Andy Marlin/Getty Images)
Although it’s yet to crack the TV market with a major network deal, LIV Golf announced 10 of the expected 14 for next year. Returning to the schedule are LIV Golf Chicago at Bolingbrook Golf Club from Aug. 8-10, LIV Golf Dallas at Maridoe Golf Club from June 27-29, LIV Golf Andalucia at Valderrama from July 11-13 and LIV Golf UK at JCB Golf and Country Club from July 25-27.
Two new venues will bring the league to Korea and Indiana for the first time. Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea will host LIV Golf Korea May 2-4 and The Club at Chatham Hills in Westfield, Indiana, will host LIV Golf Indianapolis from Aug. 15-17. The Indianapolis event will be the individual season finale, which was in Chicago this year.
Here’s a look at the known events on the LIV Golf schedule for 2025.
The tour pumped millions into its purses and billions into the game with a $3 billion deal with Strategic Sports Group that includes an initial investment of $1.5 billion into the launch of a commercial venture, PGA Tour Enterprises.
The Tourâs top money winner, Scottie Scheffler, saw his bank account grow by more than $54 million this year from his prize money and bonuses.
On the course, Jon Rahm, LIVâs most significant signing since the first season, won the 2024 individual championship joining previous champions Talor Gooch (2023) and Dustin Johnson (2022). Bryson DeChambeau became the second LIV golfer to win a major championship, capturing the U.S. Open. Brooks Koepka won the 2023 PGA Championship.
But according to a new report from Sports Business Journal, the Saudi-based league is working behind the scenes to find a replacement for Norman as CEO, even though the two-time British Open champ could be retained in senior leadership.
Here’s more from the story:
Saudi Arabiaâs Public Investment Fund, which backs LIV financially, has contracted out London-based Odgers Berndtson for the search, which would take over for Greg Norman in the CEO role.
Though handled quietly, the search firm has looked to well-regarded executives in sports business for the position, with names including Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark among those targeted early on, according to sources. Talks with Yormark did not progress, but it shows the level of executive PIF has been targeting.
This is not the first sports job PIF has contracted Odgers Berndtson for. PIF also used the firm when it hired Paul Mitchell as the new sporting director for Newcastle United in July.
While Odgers Berndtson has been handling the search for PIF, LIV itself has been using CAA Sports and Egon Zehnder on other leadership searches.
According to SBJ, Norman has remained in decent favor with the ownership group, so he could still be used in a multitude of roles in the future.
LIV Golf CEO, Greg Norman talks to Captain Bryson DeChambeau of Crushers GC on the range during Day One of the LIV Golf Invitational – Miami at Trump National Doral Miami on October 20, 2023, in Doral, Florida. (Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
At the recent Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, LIV Golfâs Yasir Al-Rumayyan, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and DP World Tour Chief Executive Officer Guy Kinnings all took part in the DP World Tour event contested over three of the most famous venues in golf: St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns.
Even if deal terms emerge in the coming weeks, a long and bumpy road lies ahead.
âThere are four types of men in the world: lovers, opportunists, lookers-on and imbeciles,â wrote the 19th-century French philosopher Hippolyte Taine. âThe happiest are the imbeciles.â All are well represented in the chaos prevailing in menâs professional golf.
The imbeciles â usually more irate than happy â can be found in the drool-speckled ranks of LIV Golfâs social media trolls, but not exclusively. How else to explain a decision to hold the most recent meeting between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund in New York City on September 11? PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan wasnât present, and so didnât face the fraught question of whether to attend the 9/11 memorial ceremony that his government contributed so much to bringing about.
What of the lovers, opportunists and lookers-on?
The latter is the largest group, the PGA Tourâs journeymen, veterans and staff who arenât deemed important enough to be updated on matters that will greatly impact their working lives. (Thereâs arguably a subcategory of lookers-away, former fans who are disengaging from golf, due at least in part to the division and diluted product.) Opportunists, meanwhile, are laboring to exhaustion.
Strategic Sports Group has been opportunistic â not in the pejorative sense â by investing $1.5 billion in a sport that is under-leveraged. The Saudis too, by identifying what makes golf penetrable for sportswashing: players who donât have contracts but do have a delusional notion of their market worth. The DP World Tour can also be included. It benefitted from a lucrative alliance when the PGA Tour needed to scope the rising Saudi tide, and now does little to quash speculation that it might be an alternative for the PIF if a deal isnât reached with the Americans. And of course, Greg Norman, who finally roped a dope willing to finance his grievances, and whose insistence that LIV is thriving has as much credibility as tales of canine suppers in Springfield, Ohio.
But none have been more opportunistic than PGA Tour golfers. Theyâve secured previously unimaginable pay for working in an underperforming product, grabbed control in a governance shakeup amid the aftershocks of the Framework Agreement, and are playing power games by creating their own marketing events, safe in the knowledge that the Tour lacks the leverage over members that it enjoyed during the imperial commissariat of Tim Finchem.
The game is ripe with the stench of every man for himself.
So what of the lovers? Thatâs you, golf fans. And right now, the thing you love is making it awfully tough to maintain your affection, even for those who arenât overly troubled by the prospect of Saudi investment being mainstreamed. How long before a new normal is established and the political and economic narratives diminish in this sport?
Talk to enough people familiar with the state of negotiations between the PGA Tour and the PIF and itâs clear progress is happening, but uncertainty remains. Not least the timeframe governing a Department of Justice review of any agreement. Assuming that the presidential election doesnât lead to a stubby Cheeto thumb being placed on the scale, that process could take more than a year. In hopes of hastening it, the Tour has constantly updated Justice officials on what theyâre considering and addressed any concerns raised. But itâs unclear if the parties could seek some manner of preliminary green light from the DOJ in advance of an announcement, nor even how detailed deal terms must be to pass muster. Two things can be assured: players will not go backward on what theyâre earning and LIV will be repackaged rather than retired, since regulators would likely see the alternatives as anticompetitive.
Despite Rory McIlroyâs public suggestion that the onus is on PGA Tour officials to get moving, itâs the PIF that will most impact whether a deal is realized. A Justice Department review will almost certainly involve requests for discovery materials similar to those the Saudis refused to submit during antitrust litigation, and which theyâve declined to hand over to a U.S. Senate committee for a year. Sources close to the negotiations say thereâs clear intent by the PIF to avoid establishing a transparency precedent that might shine a light on its other investments in the U.S., known and stealth. So what level of compliance will prove sufficient for the U.S. government? It wonât get 100 percent, but how far shy of that will it settle for?
Which is to say that even if deal terms emerge in the coming weeks â not implausible, based on people Iâve talked to â a long and bumpy road lies ahead. Which promises to leave lovers waiting, imbeciles slabbering and lookers-on idling, all while giving opportunists more time to better angle themselves to the trough.
Late Tuesday night, LIV Golf announced its first four events of the 2025 season, which will be the fourth for the league. The four tournaments all have international flair, but it’s where they fall on the calendar that paints a bleak outlook for what’s to come in the journey to have all of the best players play together again in more than the four major championships.
LIV will begin its season Feb. 6-8 with LIV Golf Riyadh, the first time LIV Golf has played in Saudi Arabia’s capital city. The next week, the league will travel Down Under for LIV Golf Adelaide from Feb. 14-16, which has been by far the most successful LIV event through the league’s first three years.
Next, LIV will have another two events in back-to-back weeks, starting with Hong Kong Golf Club for LIV Golf Hong Kong, March 7-9. Then, it’s a return to Sentosa Golf Club from March 14-16 for LIV Golf Singapore.
“As we set our sights on 2025, LIV Golf is gearing up for our most ambitious season start, to date,” said Greg Norman, LIV Golf’s CEO and commissioner. “Since our debut in 2022, LIV Golf has played 34 tournaments in nine different countries across four continents. We are a global league with a global footprint, and weâre excited to kick off next season with four truly international events that will deliver our unique blend of elite golf, entertainment and culture to fans around the world.”
Seeing LIV Golf announce events for the 2025 season should be no surprise, as there has been hardly any traction toward a deal to bring the top players in the world back together to play on one tour, but the dates of LIV’s events are a stark contrast to anything seen in the first three years of the league.
LIV Golf has normally played its events opposite of the PGA Tour’s top tournaments, having some crossover but often doing what it can to avoid spots on the calendar like signature events.
Not next year.
LIV Golf Riyadh will be contested the same week as the WM Phoenix Open. Then, LIV Golf Adelaide will go head-to-head with Tiger Woods’ event, the Genesis Invitational.
Fast forward to March, LIV Golf Hong Kong is the same week as the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and LIV Golf Singapore will go head-to-head with the Tour’s flagship event, the Players Championship.
It’s important to note, with all four LIV events playing essentially a day ahead and overnight live in the United States, they won’t be competing directly with the Tour events. Nevertheless, the more and more time goes on, it seems less and less likely there’s traction for the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to come together.
The schedule release for LIV Golf in 2025 shows the league doesn’t care what’s going on in the PGA Tour world.
Two events remain for LIV Golf in the 2024 season, starting next week in Chicago at Bolingbrook, the individual season finale. Then the team championship will happen the following week in Dallas at Maridoe.
Some of the leagueâs stars have been told they wonât see renewals on the scale that lured them to LIV.
The pithy â3 Râsâ rubric has been used to summarize fundamentals in many areas, from the New Deal (Relief, Recovery, Reform), to early learning (Relationships, Repetition, Routines), to the environment (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). The same formula can illuminate what matters most in golf these days: Reward, Reputation, Relevance.
The economics that have warped the menâs professional game ensure ample reward, but for some that has come at the cost of both reputation and relevance, none moreso than Jon Rahm. Golf Digestâs Jaime Diaz reports that the Spaniard regrets his December move to LIV Golf, and while Rahm himself is unlikely to ever confirm such a sentiment, Diaz is a fastidious reporter and his account squares with what many others in the game have heard. Even in his (at times bizarre) public comments, Rahm sounds more notes of poignant yearning for the tour he left than of fierce advocacy for the one he joined.
He was rewarded though, even if the oft-cited contract amount ($500 million) is wholly unsourced and â according to someone close to Rahm â wildly exaggerated. Whatever the figure, it was sufficient for a man who emphatically pledged fealty to the PGA Tour to don a LIV letterman jacket and stand next to Greg Norman. Rahmâs isnât the only reputation bruised after a volte-face, and at least he didnât explicitly express his willingness to overlook murder and human rights abuses if doing so gave him leverage over the PGA Tour, that being the putrid pyre on which Phil Mickelsonâs legacy was incinerated.
Yet a day is nearing when Saudi subsidies cease to provide a dominant advantage when it comes to player rewards, because LIVâs irrational economy faces a retraction. A few player contracts expire in 2024, more in â25. Some of the leagueâs stars have been told they wonât see renewals on the scale that lured them to LIV, so those who extend will be doing so for less. Assuming extensions are even offered. Perhaps they will be, but if no deal is reached between the Public Investment Fund and the PGA Tour, then the Saudi government has a call to make: throw good money after bad with another round of contracts for an execrable product with zero market traction, or cut loose. And they have been known to favor chopping those deemed inconvenient.
Across town, it’s a bull market, for now. Scottie Scheffler has earned more than $28 million in prize money this season on the PGA Tour. Throw in his Comcast bonus ($8 million), two lucrative events this week and next (each paying $3.6 million to the winner) and the eye-watering FedEx Cup bonuses disbursed later this month at East Lake (top payout: $25 million), and Scheffler could clear well north of $60 million. And that excludes endorsements, the value of the equity grant he received in PGA Tour Enterprises, and a pension scheme that would make Congressional grifters feel shortchanged.
But how sustainable is that model? Strategic Sports Group injected $1.5 billion into the Tour with the promise of the same again, but thatâs not intended to be debited directly into playersâ pockets as purses. An accounting will come in Ponte Vedra as surely as it will in Riyadh. âSustainability is living on natureâs income rather than living on its capital,â wrote the late physicist, Murray Gell-Mann. His aphorism has currency when applied to the golf economy, regardless of which tour one looks at.
That said, one tour has attracted investors who see the potential for significant returns. The other survives on the whims of a solitary banker, and he works for a mercurial authoritarian. Thatâs a shaky foundation for long-term sustainability. The popular narrative has the PGA Tour unable to withstand more poaching, having its product strength bled out, seeing its sponsors and fans fleeing. There are very minor elements of truth in those assertions, but the Saudis are even more incentivized to seek a face-saving deal. The PGA Tour is looking less like LIVâs rival and more like its life raft.
For some guys who cashed out with LIV, most of what happens next wonât matter. They got theirs. But not everyone who went to LIV lacked the weaponry or the stomach for the fight at the elite level. Certainly not Rahm. He was by far the most competitive player to jump, and while he hasnât performed well sinceâat least outside the 54-hole exhibition ecosystemâitâs too limited a data sample to say LIV has diminished him as a force. But itâs not too early to say LIV has made him less relevant.
He is missed by fans on the PGA Tour since heâs obviously among the best in the world, regardless of who signs his check. But those fans have not followed him across the Rubicon and wonât be scrambling to The CW in hopes of seeing him between reruns of “Jack Hannaâs Into the Wild” and “Crime Nation.” The third pillar of golfâs â3 Râsâ â relevance â is something LIV players now experience four weeks a year, at major championships. Their own tour canât deliver it, no matter how many bot farms fertilize social media on its behalf. Rahm has learned that his relevance wasnât based solely on being Jon Rahm, but on being Jon Rahm with a credible platform and an audience of scale.
One âRâ will have to suffice for him right now.
As the person taking the video said, “First time touching it, that’s crazy!”
For the second time in his career, LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau captured the U.S. Open title last week at the famed Pinehurst No. 2, besting Rory McIlroy by one shot after the Northern Irishman played his final four holes 3 over.
DeChambeau returned to the LIV Golf circuit this week, as the Saudi-backed league is in Tennessee for LIV Golf Nashville at The Grove, its ninth event of the season.
During his career, The Shark won the Open Championship twice but no other majors. He finished second at the U.S. Open twice, once at Winged Foot in 1984 and again at Shinnecock in 1995.
As the person taking the video said, “First time touching it, that’s crazy!”
đ¨đđ LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman raises the U.S. Open trophy
Short misses leave Rory McIlroy dangling over career precipice.
When his final par putt of the U.S. Open made a cruel right turn on Sunday evening, a stroke propelled by a decade of fear and fate, Rory McIlroy doomed himself to a destiny that should burn far more than merely losing another major championship.
In the annals of golf history, there are two names that can now be linked together as the most talented players of their generation who underachieved in the sportâs most important events.
One is McIlroy. The other is Greg Norman.
If you donât understand why that matters, rewind back two years when McIlroy won the Canadian Open while LIV Golf was making its initial push to secure the gameâs best players with a bottomless pit of Saudi money.
Greg Norman of Australia collapses to the ground after narrowly missing a chip shot on the 15th green during the final round of the 1996 Masters, where he lost a huge lead and Nick Faldo claimed the title. (Stephen Munday/ALLSPORT)
McIlroy was the poster boy for PGA Tour loyalty. Norman was the face of LIV. The tension between them was not just about business but had clearly become personal.
“This is a day Iâll remember for a long, long time â 21st PGA Tour win, one more than someone else,” McIlroy said on CBS that afternoon. “That gave a little more extra incentive today and Iâm happy to get it done.”
The “someone else,” of course, was Norman: Winner of 20 PGA Tour titles and two British Opens but whose legacy is inexorably linked to losing majors in brutal fashion, most notably the 1996 Masters when he blew a six-shot lead beginning the final round.
The nasty, behind-the-scenes business of golf brought them into conflict. The even nastier on-course bungles under the heat of major championship pressure have brought them into the same breath of history.
Heâs just 35, has shown no signs of slippage in the nuts-and-bolts of his game, and contends at almost every major. By the numbers, he still has 40 chances or so to add to a tally that seemed limitless when he won his fourth at age 25.
But the scar tissue that has accumulated over the last decade is real. Sunday was the evidence playing out in real time for millions of golf fans to see.
Over the last several years, McIlroy has had so many chances and near-misses that his failure to close the deal was definitely a thing. But none of them seemed quite like classic choke jobs. Maybe a bad Thursday or Friday put him too far behind. Or the putter went cold on the weekend. Or someone else just went out and played the round of their life on Sunday.
None of that happened this time.
For most of the final round, McIlroy did everything he needed to do for a second U.S. Open trophy. He drove the ball almost perfectly. He started pouring in putts from distance. Walking off the 14th hole, he had a two-shot lead over DeChambeau, who was all over the place with his driver and trying to hang onto pars like a wet bar of soap.
Pinehurst is an unforgiving track with danger lurking around every corner. But at that point, it was finally up to McIlroy to end his 10-year major drought. He didn’t have to chase anyone, didnât have to worry about getting nipped from behind by an improbable birdie streak.
All he had to do was not give it away. Instead, he did the following:
No. 15: Picked way too much club on the par-3, cooking it over the green to a terrible spot and making bogey.
No. 16: Landed his approach in a great spot about 27 feet away, but three-putting with a lip-out from 2 ½ feet.
No. 17: Scrambled for par from the left bunker after a poor shot into another par-3.
No. 18: Made one of his worst driver swings of the week, caught a terrible lie in the native grass, hacked out short of the green and chipped it past the hole for a difficult 3 foot, 9 inch putt but one he should have made anyway.
It is, without question, the biggest debacle of his career. Itâs his 1996 Masters. Itâs his magnum opus choke.
Rory McIlroy reacts after a missed putt on the eighteenth green during the final round of the U.S. Open golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports
Over the last year, McIlroyâs stance on the PGA Tour getting into business with the Saudis has softened as his idealism ran headlong into reality. Now, he needs to get comfortable with the idea that unless he can figure out a way to break this major-less streak, he and Norman will come up in the same sentences far more often than he should be comfortable with.
They are both considered the best of their generation with a driver in their hands.
They are both so consistently good that they could win a lot and contend in any tournament on any kind of course.
They both have a big hole in their reĚsumeĚ at Augusta National.
And now, itâs undeniable: At a similar stage of their careers, they did not fulfill their potential when it mattered most.
Norman won a couple more tournaments after the 1996 Masters, but he was never the same force within the game after that collapse. By simple virtue of his physical talent and age, it seems unlikely McIlroy will suffer the same fate. It would be shocking if he didnât truly contend at several more majors.
But the only conclusion you can draw from watching McIlroy take a machete to his chances Sunday is that the demons are real. And over the next several years, he will either go down the Norman path and be remembered as a guy who should have won a whole lot more or the Phil Mickelson path and knock off a couple legacy-boosting majors when he wasnât expected to.
Mickelson, too, gave away more than his share of chances â especially at the U.S. Open, which he never won. But with the British Open he won at age 43 and the out-of-nowhere PGA Championship he pulled off in 2021, nobody puts Mickelson in the Norman category. With six majors, he is simply the second-best player of his era and one of the best ever.
But the interesting thing about Mickelson is that he didnât win his first until he was 33, just slightly younger than McIlroy is now. McIlroy kind of did it in reverse, collecting the big wins when he was too young to even feel the pressure of time and responsibility to the game.
And now, when he reaches for that magic and needs it the most, it just doesnât seem to be there.
Sunday should have been a day for McIlroy to get on the Mickelson trajectory, end the major drought and move the conversation toward how many he will rack up before itâs all said and done. Instead, he left Pinehurst just like Norman left Augusta 28 years ago with more questions than ever about when â or if â itâll ever happen again.
With the event now sold out, the combative LIV Golf CEO may have to sneak in from the beach.
When Henrik Stenson captured the Claret Jug at Royal Troon in 2016, a total of 173,000 spectators looked on.
When the storied event returns to the Scottish coast this year, a whopping 250,000 will file through the gates, the R&A announced earlier this week, adding that all the tickets had been scooped up.
With the event now sold out, the combative LIV Golf chief executive, Greg Norman, may have to sneak in from the beach.
In the tense, uneasy truce that menâs professional golf finds itself in, Norman grabbed a chunk of the limelight at the Masters after apparently buying a ticket on the secondary market.
The 69-year-old Australian, who won two Claret Jugs and lost in a playoff at Troon in 1989, was not invited by The R&A to compete in the Celebration of Champions or attend the Championsâ Dinner at St. Andrews in 2022 after the LIV rebellion had swung into action just a few weeks earlier.
âI donât think thereâs a âG Normanâ (on the list) and I think someone would have let me know if there was,â chuckled The R&Aâs director of corporate communications, Mike Woodcock, when asked if the Great White Sharkâs name had been plucked out of that ticket tombola.
Greg Norman walks behind the No. 2 hole during the first round of the Masters Tournament. (Photo: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Network)
âObviously, there are tickets still available on the resale platform or hospitality. Heâs very welcome to look there.â
At the second round of the 88th Masters, Norman wore a white golf shirt with the LIV logo, black slacks, his signature straw hat, or as one patron put it, âthe Crocodile Dundee deal,â and golf shoes with Softspikes. All that was missing was a glove, a yardage book, and, of course, an invitation as a past champion, something he never managed to achieve despite several near misses.
Instead, the CEO of LIV Golf was out walking in the gallery of Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open champion, or as another patron described him, âthe captain of the Crushers,â and lending his support. He was joined by two younger women and a heavyset man in all black, who may have been providing security.
For those in the gallery, it was like seeing a ghost. Norman, 69, who first played in the Masters in 1981 and last attempted to win a Green Jacket in 2009, showed up with a ticket he bought on the open market, according to his son, Greg Jr., in a social media post. Norman said he was there to support the 13 golfers heâd paid handsomely to defect to the upstart LIV Golf backed by Saudi Arabiaâs Public Investment Fund.
Golfweek’s Adam Schupak contributed reporting to this post.
