Greg Norman enjoyed an illustrious playing career, winning over 100 times worldwide and enjoying a whopping 331 weeks on top of the Official World Golf Ranking.
The Australian suffered plenty of heartbreak at golf’s four biggest events during his career but did end up with two claret jugs before hanging up the clubs.
Norman is now a polarizing figure in the game, spearheading LIV Golf in what has been a tumultuous time in the world of golf over the past few years.
In a recent interview with National Club Golfer, former Golf Channel and now LIV analyst David Feherty has been discussing The Shark, calling him “Tiger Woods before Tiger Woods.”
“His fingerprints are all over this and always will be. People forget at times that before Tiger Woods, there was Greg Norman who brought that level of fitness. The guy won more than 100 tournaments around the world. He was Tiger Woods before Tiger Woods.”
Feherty added:
“He was the most recognisable personality on the planet for a long time, with his long blonde hair and swashbuckling moves on the golf course. He’s an amazing character, larger than life and if he does take a different position within the organisation, his influence is always going to be felt no matter where he is in the organisation.”
Feherty’s comments follow a report from Sports Business Journal last month claiming that the Saudi-based league is working to find a replacement for Norman as CEO, even though the Australian could still be retained in a senior leadership role.
Article originally appeared on: Golfwrx.com
Flaherty is always entertaining, if prone to hyperbolic blarney at times. Like this. Norman was never “Tiger before Tiger,” because he never won against the best players in the world like tiger did. Sure, he had a “swashbuckler” persona, and he was World’s #1 for a long time, but that was based on victories in Australasian tour competition, not PGA or European tours. Of his “over hundred” victories, on 20 were on the PGA Tour, where he primarily played for 11 years or so. That’s Lanny Wadkins territory, not Tiger Woods. He had lots of fans in Europe and Asia, because he was a rare counterpoint to American dominance – in fact, I was a bit of a fan there for awhile. But he got more and more full of himself and bitter that the Tour didn’t shower him with love the way Australians did and he thought they should. LIV was his final F-you to them. The damage he’s done to professional golf (not to the players, who are making a ton of money from the competition, but to the game, the history, the integrity) is incalculable. F-you back at you, Greg.