The Washington Post’s Kent Babb profiled Greg Norman on the eve of LIV Golf’s first event and shared several eye-opening anecdotes. Including how he’s “cut off his longtime mentor” according to Babb’s description.
“One hundred percent truth? Jack’s a hypocrite,” he says. “When he came out with those comments, I’m thinking: Jack must have a short memory.” He says Nicklaus attended a LIV presentation and later wrote in an email that the new tour had his blessing.
“Quote-unquote, he said: ‘This is good for our game. If it’s good for the game of golf, it’s good by me,’ ” Norman says. “So, you want the facts? You’ve got the facts. Know what you said before you open your mouth.”
A spokesman for Nicklaus, who’s being sued by his own company partly because of his negotiations with the Saudis, declined to make him available for an interview but sent a statement reiterating Nicklaus’s “unwavering support” for the PGA Tour and wishing Norman well.
I think their mutual friend, hero and favorite President Donald Trump should bring these two back together! The Palm Beach Peace Accords! Jared can package it so everyone profits.
Norman on critics and players who’ve signed up:
“It doesn’t bother me,” he says. “I’m not going to back off. I’m not going to show weakness to my team. I’m not going to show weakness to monopolists. I’m going to stand up for the rights of the players.”
He pauses before continuing. “The players who decide to come on board, God bless them,” he says. “They’re going to make a lot of money.”
Norman recently went to say goodbye to his dying father and, well…
Three weeks before this year’s Masters, Norman traveled to Brisbane. The time had come to say goodbye. He walked in for the first time in four years and saw Merv in a chair he rarely leaves, where he sleeps 17 hours a day, the once-muscular man who had raised and taught and scarred him now frail at 135 pounds.
He won’t let Norman pay for a nurse, won’t sit in a wheelchair. Imagine being that stubborn, Norman says. Merv faded in and out, and Norman spoke fast as he tried to explain this thing he’s building. It’s big, he said, though Tiger and Phil and Jack, of all people … But Merv couldn’t hear him. He’d fallen asleep.
Norman talking about LIV Golf will do that to a lot of people.
Seems his sister and mother aren’t enjoying this much, either.
When Norman was in Brisbane this spring, his mother and sister tried probing him. Toini was alarmed by some of what her son was saying, in particular that Nicklaus had flipped on him. Janis said she recently stopped reading about LIV and her brother in the Australian press because, she says, they’re “crucifying” him.
“I know he doesn’t always care,” Janis says. “But we do.” “We don’t want his reputation to be ruined completely,” Toini says. “He’s always been looked up to, and now …”
Norman’s 91-year-old mother pauses.
“We don’t know,” she says. “He’s certainly becoming more and more like Dad,” Janis says. “When he gets an idea,” Toini says, “then he will just — he won’t give up on anything.”
