Rory McIlroy has stated that Greg Norman‘s departure as CEO of LIV Golf is “most likely a very good transfer” whereas Jon Rahm believes it offers the Saudi-backed league a “much less threatening picture.”
LIV is transferring ahead with sports activities govt Scott O’Neil as its CEO, successfully ending the already fading confrontation between Norman — who helped get the league off the bottom — and McIlroy.
McIlroy, one in every of LIV’s most outspoken critics within the early days, heaped reward on O’Neil’s resume.
“[O’Neil] has a tremendous monitor report with what he has completed in sports activities when it comes to managing groups and teams of groups, possession teams,” McIlroy stated on the Dubai Desert Basic. “He has bought the appropriate credentials to take over a sports activities league. I feel for LIV it’s most likely a very good transfer now they’re established.”
O’Neil has served as CEO of the mother or father 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 fervour, the tenacity and the imaginative and prescient to proceed leveraging LIV Golf’s place as a pre-eminent, world sports activities and leisure firm and to steer our superb groups and gamers for years to come back.”
Norman, the 1986 and 1983 Open champion who will proceed with the league in an ambiguous function, typically 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 battle,” saying later that yr 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 plenty of flak the primary couple of years,” McIlroy stated. “He’s most likely one of many solely guys in golf who might have taken on that function. He bought it off the bottom, and you need 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 long run holds for [LIV], however the transfer they’re making, particularly from an govt standpoint, it would not appear to be they will go away anytime quickly.”
Rahm, who joined LIV in September 2023, additionally felt the CEO change was a transfer in the appropriate route for the breakaway circuit.
The Spanish golfer believes it should assist enhance LIV’s place amid negotiations for an funding cope with the rival PGA Tour, with talks on their “framework settlement” having made little obvious progress.
“Sadly, there’s been somewhat bit — probably somewhat an excessive amount of — unhealthy blood between Greg and possibly the governing our bodies,” Rahm stated. “And to have anyone outdoors of which may assist the scenario.
“I feel having an outsider — I say outsider as a result of he has not been concerned — might be an excellent factor in the case of him sitting down on the desk with the opposite governing our bodies.
“I feel an out of doors perspective, and probably a much less threatening picture, would possibly assist that, as nicely.”
There may be already much less animosity between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour 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 most important entities.
McIlroy stated O’Neil attended that match in addition to the primary night time of TGL — the new simulator golf sequence based by McIlroy and Tiger Woods — earlier this month.
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