For the second consecutive year, LIV Golf is doing Miami the week before the Masters. LIV is at Trump Doral, once a stronghold of the PGA Tour, but that was then. There’s a lot of that in golf lately.
Thirteen LIVsters are playing in the Masters next week. Seven green-coated their way in: Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Jon Rahm, Patrick Reed, Charl Schwartzel and Bubba Watson. Three others (Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith) secured their Thursday-Friday Augusta tee times by way of victory in other Grand Slam events. And the final three, Tyrrell Hatton of England, Adrian Meronk of Poland and Joaquin Niemann of Chile, got in by way of an open-mic competition.
Last year, there was one other LIVster who went from the Miami event to the Augusta event, though not as a player: Greg Norman. Norman, now 70 and fit as ever, was the commissioner and CEO of LIV Golf until January. He attended the 2024 Masters as a paying spectator, even though, by tradition, former major champions are invited by the club to attend the tournament. This year, Norman is not at Doral and there’s no reason to think he’ll be at Augusta, either. The march of time. Two places that forever will be associated with Norman are Doral, where he won three times, and Augusta, where he had three second-place finishes.
Last year, at the LIV event at Trump Doral, everywhere you turned, there was Shark. (In his playing heyday, Tour caddies did not say “the Shark.” He was Shark.) You saw him at the driving range, in Doral’s restaurants, on the course, at the Sunday-night prize ceremony.
I went to the LIV event in Miami last year, chiefly to play in its pro-am, gathering string for a new book. (This one steals openly from George Plimpton and his classic journal of pro-am life, The Bogey Man.) I played in the pro-am as a guest. Along the way, I ate some fine meals in player-family-caddie dining and heard a caddie describe the new garden he was designing for his house. I went to a Saturday-night tournament concert and heard a loud rapper named Akon. And, during the pro-am round, I enjoyed expert advice from my caddie, Mac Barnhardt, who was taking a slide from his regular job, life-coaching Andy Ogletree, LIV golfer and HyFlyer. Ogletree was our front-nine pro-am pro.
The previous night, at the pro-am party, Greg Norman was the bouncer. OK, not the bouncer but the LIV commissioner, and at the door when I got to the tent. “Come on in here, you a–hole,” Norman said, giving me a hug. I’ve always had a nice rapport with Norman. He knows I am a stodgy traditionalist who thinks serious tournament golf should be played with full fields over four rounds with a cut. He doesn’t seem to hold it against me.
I saw a lot of Norman at the height of his powers and since then. He has been one of the most charismatic figures in the game. As a reporter, I have found he’ll answer almost any question you ask him. Last month, I asked him about the final punctuation mark from the 1996 Masters. That was the year he was the 54-hole leader over Nick Faldo by six, but after 72 holes, Faldo had won by five over Norman. The 18th-hole hug the two men shared was remarkable, because they weren’t even frenemies — neither had any affection for the other. It mystifies Norman to this day.
“Faldo was an aloof, self-centered enigma, which made him the player he was,” Norman told me. “So, I cannot explain the hug. Let’s just say it was a byproduct of the values golf carries, not the players.” What a candid and insightful thing to say.
I cannot explain the hug. Let’s just say it was a byproduct of the values golf carries, not the players. Greg Norman
Some people have wondered if those Masters invitations for former major winners are a real thing. Most are — unless you are Greg Norman.
One amusing aside about that. Jeff Sluman, winner of the 1988 PGA Championship, played in the Masters 17 times between 1988 and 2007. He knew he hadn’t qualified to play in the 2008 Masters, but one day an invitation on heavy Augusta National stationery arrived at the Sluman home in suburban Chicago.
“So, you are playing?” Linda Sluman, an oncologist, asked her husband.
“No, honey,” Sluman said. “I got invited to attend the Masters, not play in it.”
Many former champions attend the Masters. In any given year, you might see Lou Graham (winner of the 1975 U.S. Open) or David Graham (winner of the 1981 U.S. Open) on campus at Augusta. It’s an effective way to hand down ye olde game from one generation to the next. For years, you’d see Jerry Pate playing in the Wednesday par-3 tournament.
But don’t go looking for Jeff Sluman at Augusta. (His view is that when he was done playing it was time to clear the stage.) And don’t go looking for Greg Norman.
Norman tried to launch a world golf tour in 1995 and never gave up on the idea. Thirty years later, it would be easy to say none of this could have been predicted. Well, here’s one person who would not say that: Jack Nicklaus.
In his 1997 autobiography, My Story, Nicklaus wrote presciently about the prospect for a world tour. If you have the book, you can find the relevant section on pages 326 through 328. Here’s one paragraph from it:
“Despite the abortive effort of early 1995 to launch a ‘World Tour,’ my guess is that the final resolution of the closed-door issue will accompany the evolution of just such an entity in one form or another. That’s because some kind of world golf circuit is such a logical end-product of golf’s ever-growing internationalization.”
Here’s another person who saw it coming: Greg Norman.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at michael.bamberger@golf.com
