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Greg Norman’s LIV Golf exit doesn’t prove its demise

Greg Norman’s LIV Golf exit doesn’t prove its demise

Optics matter in business, and even moreso in our current polarized moment when believing is seeing, when any detail can be twisted in support of a bias we already hold. So it is with Jay Monahan’s compensation, which Sportico reported was just over $23 million in 2023, per PGA Tour tax filings. Nothing turns ardent capitalists into Bernie Bros quite like revelations about executive salaries, and reactions to Jay’s pay didn’t disappoint. Whether Monahan actually deserves that money is a matter for the board that approved his package, and which presumably signed off on the bonus structure that accounts for the bulk of it. But to casual observers, it fits a drearily familiar narrative: people who bear at least some responsibility for the lousy state of golf (chiefly players, with executives a distant second) are earning more than ever while their business woefully underperforms by almost any reasonable metric.

Optics certainly doomed LPGA Tour commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who resigned on Monday. She can point to a handful of positives from her three years on the job, but Marcoux Samaan couldn’t shake an unflattering perception that comes with botched logistics, poor relationship maintenance and dithering amid crises.

It would be easy to also cite optics for the reportedly imminent departure of another industry executive — Greg Norman, as CEO of LIV Golf — given his Comical Ali-style bluster in the face of failure that only grows more glaringly obvious with each flip of the calendar. But that would be a disservice to the flaxen-haired finger puppet, who has undeniably been successful in ways that his Saudi benefactors required.

Sure, objective reality says Norman has failed to deliver a significant audience, serious commercial sponsorship or a meaningful media deal for his product. But his dexterity in signing someone else’s checkbook gave LIV the only market share it needed — enough competitively relevant players — and his inability to feel shame made him the ideal frontman to brazen out the initial disgust about sportswashing by authoritarian regimes. But while the Shark imagined himself a visionary, to his bosses he was a mere functionary. Like many a Saudi apparatchik before him, Norman has seemingly outlived his usefulness, though unlike others his severance probably won’t be literal, via bonesaw.

Norman’s eventual ouster will have nothing to do with job performance. It’s simply preparatory for the next phase of the…

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