Rory McIlroy has mentioned that Greg Norman’s departure as CEO of LIV Golf is “in all probability a superb transfer” and has admitted the Saudi-backed league will not be going away “anytime quickly.”
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LIV is shifting ahead with sports activities govt Scott O’Neil as its CEO, successfully ending the already fading disagreement between Norman — who helped get the league off the bottom — and McIlroy.
McIlroy, one in all LIV’s most outspoken critics within the early days, heaped reward on O’Neil’s resume.
“[O’Neil] has an incredible monitor report with what he has performed in sports activities when it comes to managing groups and teams of groups, possession teams,” McIlroy mentioned on the Dubai Desert Traditional. “He has received the best credentials to take over a sports activities league. I feel for LIV it’s in all probability a superb transfer now they’re established.”
O’Neil has served as CEO of the father or mother firm of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and NHL’s New Jersey Devils, president of Madison Sq. Backyard and CEO of amusement park and resort firm Merlin Entertainments Group.
He was formally confirmed as the brand new CEO on Wednesday, with LIV Golf chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan saying in a press release O’Neil “has the eagerness, the tenacity and the imaginative and prescient to proceed leveraging LIV Golf’s place as a pre-eminent, international sports activities and leisure firm and to steer our superb groups and gamers for years to return.”
Norman, the 1986 and 1983 Open champion who will proceed with the league in an ambiguous position, usually got here off as divisive when LIV entered the golf scene. He known as McIlroy “brainwashed by the PGA Tour” in 2022, placing Norman within the four-time main champion’s crosshairs.
McIlroy blamed him partly for golf’s “civil warfare,” saying later that 12 months that he ought to “exit stage left” to permit the “adults” to patch up the game’s schism.
The Northern Irishman commented on Norman in a way more pacifying method in Dubai.
“Greg took numerous flak the primary couple of years,” McIlroy mentioned. “He’s in all probability one of many solely guys in golf who may have taken on that position. He received it off the bottom, and it’s important to commend him for that. Now it is time for somebody with a bit extra expertise to take over.
“I actually do not know what the longer term holds for [LIV], however the transfer they’re making, particularly from an govt standpoint, it does not appear like they’re going to go away anytime quickly.”
Though the continuing negotiations between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf on their “framework settlement” have made little obvious progress, there may be much less animosity between the edges in 2025 than there was when LIV began.
McIlroy and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler defeated LIV members Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka in an exhibition match in December, the primary such exhibition match pitting stars from the game’s two predominant entities.
McIlroy mentioned O’Neil attended that match in addition to the primary evening of TGL — the brand new simulator golf sequence based by McIlroy and Tiger Woods — earlier this month.
