Did Greg Norman recruit for LIV Golf at the QBE Shootout?

There’s an old saying that once is an accident, twice is coincidence and three times is a pattern. What if I told you that 18 LIV Golf players who jumped from the PGA Tour this season for boatloads of Saudi cash had competed in the QBE Shootout, aka the Shark Shootout? That’s more than coincidence.

It appears that Norman, who hosted the unofficial Tour event since 1989, exploited his hosting duties to recruit players to LIV.

Developing a chummy relationship with Tour pros at the one event where the Shark regularly got to spend a week in the locker room and form relationships with them turned out to be rewarding. Of the 18 former Shootout competitors who joined LIV, 13 of them played in Naples, Florida, within the past two years when the upstart Saudi-backed golf league was taking flight.

A conspiracy theory, you say? Well, that could be but hopefully some of the discovery in the LIV-PGA Tour lawsuit will shed some light on Norman’s recruiting process.

Norman, the CEO and Commissioner of LIV, isn’t participating at the QBE, neither are the LIV players from a Silly Season event that Norman began with the best intentions: Norman, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd teed it up at Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando in 1986 as a fundraiser for what is now the Arnold Palmer Medical Center in Orlando. It grew from there.

Let’s take a look at the 18 players who previously spent at least one fun-filled week at the Ritz-Carlton and played at Tiburon Golf Club but are banned from the unofficial team event after leaving for richer pastures with LIV Golf.

Kevin Tway, left, and Rory Sabbatini, who won the QBE Shootout, pose with tournament founder and host Greg Norman on Dec. 15, 2019. (Photo: Michael O’Byron/QBE Shootout)

This was Norman’s baby and he was proud of it. Despite his long-running feud with the PGA Tour, he put those feelings aside to serve as tournament host and did a lot of good for the Naples-Fort Myers community. Norman made a record 24 appearances in the event as tournament host and won the event in 1998 in a playoff with partner Steve Elkington. He last competed in the tournament in 2013.

Joaquin Niemann of Chile and Abraham Ancer of Mexico joke on the range prior to the final round of the QBE Shootout at Tiburon Golf Club on December 13, 2020 in Naples, Florida. (Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)

Mexico’s Abraham Ancer played just once in 2020, teaming with Joaquin Niemann….