Cleary: Merge? Forget it. LIV Golf should take on the PGA Tour (2024)

Nothing to do with me, and that’s how I like it.

“I really don't want to know what's going on over there because we are so fixated on growing and developing and building out what LIV is today, and doing our schedule for 2025 and going into 2026,” Norman told media ahead of another successful LIV Adelaide event.

He said the same thing to Golf Australia magazine in November: “I’m not involved with those negotiations. I’m not. I’ve said this all along. I have my job running LIV. And the PIF, our investment arm, is investing into LIV. So, I’m doing my job over here and I have nothing to do with that negotiation.”

It holds up. Putting Norman and Jay Monahan in the same room, asking them to divide The Great Pie, to give-and-take, see how that works out. They could actually physically fight. No they couldn’t. But they wouldn't help. Monahan’s genius escapes me while Norman seems more a business man come figurehead than master negotiator. LIV communications executives don't want him speaking too much.

Yet the man's ambitous and far from stupid and owns a mega-million business based on the value of his self as brand. And he knows more than he's letting on about what's going on between the PIF and the PGA Tour. And I reckon, based on his body language and bullishness in Adelaide, that he's been assured that LIV’s going nowhere.

When Norman spoke to Golf Australia magazine last year, he said that he talks to PIF Chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan almost every day. He didn’t want to tell us what they talked about but you reckon he wouldn’t have asked old mate what’s been going on in his discussions with Monahan and the money-heads from Fenway Sports Group, and which could affect the future of LIV Golf and by extension Norman himself?

I suggest: yeah-nah.

“Our responsibility," Norman said,"is to look after our people, our players, and where we want to go."

And where is that? Norman said there would be just the one Australian event in the 14-venue league, for the next year or three, a pat on the bum for South Australia’s premierPeter Malinauskas who risked political capital bringing the 'tainted' bread and circuses to his state.

There’s also been talk of golf under lights – which would make sense in the Middle East where they’ve been shotgun-starting in 40-odd degrees at midday – and home-and-away tournaments, whatever that means.

But what they should do is this: take on the PGA Tour. Challenge them to an end-of-season LIV Golf versus PGA Tour tournament. The seven best LIV team versus seven teams made up of PGA Tour and DP World Tour players.

Make it three rounds of individual strokeplay with scores adding up to the team tally. Anoint a winner after three days. On the Sunday it's purely a teams event to decide the greatest golf team - and by extension tour - in the world.

The marketeers would froth: a knock-down, drag-em-out wrestle-mania between Establishment Loyalists and Feisty Rebels. Norman versus Monahan. Rory versus Rahmbo. Rory and Tiger Woods could bring over teams from that funny hybrid indoor virtual ‘The Golf League’ business.

And the whole shebang could be promoted as the Great Annual Decider for the Greatest Golf Team – and Tour – in The World.

The three rounds plus an extra day of teams only competition holds up for LIV proper. It needs to be less confusing. It's like there’s two tournaments going on at once.Imagine a Ryder Cup with a shotgun start that's also hosting an individual PGA Tour tournament.

And with the firecrackers and pissed-up fans shouting in the back of Dean Burmester’s swing, it’s too hard for television to follow much less the punter near a scoreboard in the Birdie Shack, or what have you.

Even in the Media Centre with several televisions and other screens dedicated to statistics and the leaderboard, there’s too much going on.

So what they should do this: asJon Rahmsuggested, make it 72 holes. But make the first 54 holes about the individual tournament, with team points going towards seeding day four, the purely team event. That's the focus.

Stick with 54 holes and the nod to the Roman numerals for the individual title but kick off round one on the Thursday. Then have three days golf watching the supermen do their thing.

The players will be accruing points for their teams, but in the background.

Then, come Sunday, the teams event. Grouped togther in three-balls, captains vs captains, as they did round one in Adelaide.

The teams play-off in Adelaide was great fun. People hung from the trees. But leading up to it, Ripper GC was, at one stage, six shots in the lead. But who knew?

In the individual, Brendan Steele was being chased down by Rahm, Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel. Cam Smith got towithin three shots. But it was hard to follow his ‘charge’, whether on television or on the ground, with everything else going on all at once.

Better to focus on one tournament and give the winner his time in the sun. Steele’s win has been largely overlooked.

Then, on the Sunday, all-in on the teams. All leaderboards telling us who’s where and what’s going on.

The South Australia tourism industry wouldn’t knock back an extra day of inbound doneros. Travelling punters could enjoy another day at the Watering Hole or playing golf at Glenelg or spending the Saturday at Morphettville gallops.

I see very few losers.

Make it happen, Sharky.