Norman had words for pundits after a well-attended LIV occasion.
It was a happy three days at LIV Golf Adelaide, in Australia, with unruly swarms and record-setting participation for the breakaway circuit. And when the ultimate putts dropped and the throngs scattered, the celebration kept on going, turning into a feel sorry for party.
“I really feel too bad for them,” LIV CEO Greg Norman said.
The objects of his sensitivity, Norman said, in an meet with Australian Golf Process, were LIV Golf’s pundits, a misguided bunch in Norman’s view.
“Vindication isn’t the proper word,” he said. “It’s the obliviousness of others who basically didn’t understand what we were attempting to do.”
Norman’s comments came within the wake of an occasion that drew more than 94,000 fans to the Grange Golf Club, the foremost for a LIV Golf competition since the league’s dispatch about two a long time prior.
Satisfied by the numbers, Norman said that he was too thankful for the chance to deliver fans in his domestic nation the kind of wearing amusement they merited.
“The back Australia gave me amid my possess playing career for decades was something I have never forgotten,” he said. “It’s why I brought LIV Golf back domestic. I did it for them. The individuals have well and really spoken.”
For all the huge names it has poached from the PGA Tour, and in spite of the bottomless bankroll behind it, LIV has barely slaughtered it on the evaluations front with its group arrange, 54-hole competitions. But in relative terms, Australia has been a responsive showcase. Final year’s occasion at Adelaide, which drew a few 77,000 fans, was the best-attended LIV competition of 2023.NEWSDYLAN DETHIER
In its brief life, the event has gained a notoriety as LIV’s reply to the Tour’s broadly unruly Squander Administration Phoenix Open. In spite of the fact that Adelaide draws no place close the same estimate crowds, its onlookers have appeared a comparative fondness for non-traditional golf behavior. This week, for occasion, at the par-3 12th, which is known as the “watering hole” for its boisterous and well-lubricated environment, Lucas Herbert’s caddie was struck within the back of the head by a water bottle flung by a fan after Herbert depleted a birdie putt. The caddie, Scratch Pugh, was not harmed, but the occurrence was a calming update of how rapidly boisterous conduct can get out of hand.
By tournament’s conclusion, the swarm had other reasons to urge energized. Whereas American Brendan Steele won the person competition, the group parcel of the occasion went to Ripper GC, captained by Australian star Cameron Smith. His squad won in a playoff over Stinger GC.
Not everybody was excited with that result, or the fan behavior that went with it. On the primary gap of the playoff, Dignitary Burmester of Stinger developed unmistakably baffled with the divided swarm, which cheered when he left a shot in a green-side bunker. Prior within the day, Burmester had allegedly told the crowd to closed up with a command punctuated by an swearword.
None of which showed up to weigh on Norman, who, in the radiance of the procedures, said that feel sorry for wasn’t all that he was feeling.
“I’m feeling amazingly pleased right now,” he said. “With what we’ve gone through over the past 16 months, both as a association and what I’ve copped by and by, the contempt, this makes it all worthwhile.”
Leave a Reply