Greg Norman appears headed for a showdown with the PGA Tour over threats to ban players who join the breakaway Saudi-backed rebel league.
Norman, the CEO of LIV Golf, the investment fund that’s backing the $3 billion Super Golf League, now finds himself at odds with Jay Monahan, who is the commissioner of the PGA Tour.
Monahan has repeatedly threatened to ban players from the PGA Tour if they join the breakaway league, a move which has drawn the ire of Norman.
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As first reported by Golfchannel.com, Norman has sent a letter to players setting out exactly why a ban would not be possible.
“None of us should stand for these egregious acts of bullying by the PGA Tour,” Norman wrote.
“We encourage you to request the PGA Tour provide you with these threats in writing and written opinions of its outside counsel that these bans are legal and enforceable.
“It would not surprise us if the Tour is unwilling to do so.”
As Golf Digest’s Dan Rapaport tweeted, it’s a bit rich for Norman to accuse the PGA Tour of bullying, while at the same time accepting a large amount of funding from the Saudi Arabian government, whose record on such matters doesn’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny.
Norman’s letter to players made the point that the Super Golf League would like to run alongside the PGA Tour.
“It is the PGA Tour’s choice – and not ours – to refuse to entertain constructive dialogue for the betterment of the game and stakeholders across all sectors, particularly players,” he wrote, adding “We will continue our efforts to respectfully co-exist.”
In an interview with the Associated Press, Monahan said he had a clear message for players yet to make a call on the rebel tour.
“I told the players we’re moving on and anyone on the fence needs to make a decision,” he said.
AP reported that Monahan told the players at a meeting yesterday that those who sign up for a Saudi golf league will lose their PGA Tour membership and should not expect to get it back.
Norman’s proposal for a breakaway tour seems dead in the water after a host of leading players committed to the PGA Tour in the last week.
Meanwhile, journalist Alan Shipnuck has hit back at Phil Mickelson‘s claims that the 51-year-old’s comments about the rebel league were off the record and out of context.
Mickelson released a statement yesterday apologising for the “reckless” remarks, which were highly inflammatory.
“There is the problem of off the record comments being shared out of context and without my consent,” Mickelson said.
Shipnuck, who broke the story last week, is writing a book about Mickelson to be released in May. In a response to Mickelson’s statement, he said there was never any agreement that the quotes were off the record.
“He sent me a text on the morning the excerpt dropped. He was less than thrilled. Just as in the statement he released on Tuesday afternoon, Mickelson made a half-hearted attempt at revisionist history, trying to say our talk had been a private conversation, but I shut that down real quick,” Shipnuck said.
https://twitter.com/ewenmurray77/status/1496244964413562880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
“He knew I was working on a book about him and asked to speak, saying he wanted to discuss media rights and his grievances with the PGA Tour, both of which inevitably lead back to Saudi Arabia.
“If the subject of a biography phones the author, the content of that conversation is always going to inform the book, unless it is expressly agreed otherwise. Not once in our texts or when we got on the phone did Mickelson request to go off-the-record and I never consented to it; if he had asked, I would have pushed back hard, as this was obviously material I wanted for the book.
“Mickelson simply called me up and opened a vein. To claim now that the comments were off-the-record is false and duplicitous.”
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