By:
Jessica Marksbury
December 16, 2022
Rory McIlroy to LIV? Greg Norman says he is welcome.
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Along with racking up three PGA Tour wins during the last six months, Rory McIlroy has additionally positioned himself because the PGA Tour’s staunchest defender in opposition to LIV Golf.
The 33-year-old has not solely repeatedly publicly criticized LIV but additionally admitted that it’s grow to be a private mission of his to make LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman’s life as tough as potential.
Each McIlroy and Tiger Woods made headlines lately for suggesting that Norman ought to step down — or be eliminated — from his submit at LIV.
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“I feel Greg [Norman] must go. I feel he simply must exit stage left,” McIlroy mentioned. “He’s made his mark however I feel now could be the proper time to kind of say, look, you’ve acquired this factor off the bottom however nobody goes to speak except there’s an grownup within the room that may truly attempt to mend fences.”
However regardless of McIlroy’s open hostility towards each LIV and Norman, Norman mentioned McIlroy would nonetheless be welcome to affix LIV’s ranks.
“Our door is open for everyone,” Norman informed Bunkered, a UK golf publication. “We’re not the PGA Tour. We’re not like that. We exist for the gamers, so we are going to at all times have an open door, whether or not that’s for Rory or Jordan Spieth or Justin Thomas or whoever.”
Talking of Thomas, Norman mentioned that he had an informational sit-down with the present World No. 8.
“We talked to JT,” Norman informed Bunkered. “Me and one other member of my workforce, we sat down with him and gave him the complete presentation and, in the event you discover, he’s not mentioned a lot unfavourable about what we’re doing, presumably as a result of he is aware of it and understands it.”
Whereas Thomas hasn’t been as outspoken about LIV as McIlroy, on the No Laying Up podcast earlier this yr, Thomas expressed his sense of betrayal relating to the gamers who did depart, and the explanations they cited for doing so.
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“I simply want one among them would have the balls to say I’m doing this for the cash,” Thomas mentioned on the podcast. “Like, I personally would achieve much more respect for that. However it’s simply the extra the gamers hold speaking and saying that that is for the betterment of the sport, the extra agitated and irritated I get about it.”
On this challenge of his LIV place at LIV, Norman mentioned he feels safe.
“Rory and Tiger don’t know what they’re speaking about,” he informed Bunkered. “None in any respect. I’ve acquired the complete help from my chairman. A hundred percent. One thousand %. There has by no means been one factor to counsel in any other case. However I do know what they’re making an attempt to do. They’re making an attempt to bait me to attract me right into a public backwards and forwards with them and I’m not going to go down that infantile path.”
LIV Golf is ready to play a 14-tournament schedule in 2023, half of which has been revealed with dates and host programs. The primary occasion is scheduled to start Feb. 24 in Mayakoba, Mexico, adopted by stops in Arizona, Australia, Singapore, Oklahoma, Spain and West Virginia.
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As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of feminine varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everybody on the masthead. She will be able to out-hustle them within the workplace, too, the place she’s primarily answerable for producing each print and on-line options, and overseeing main particular initiatives, comparable to GOLF’s inaugural Model Issue, which debuted in February 2018. Her original interview collection, “A Spherical With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in each within the journal and in video type on GOLF.com.