Greg Norman, with the Saudi petrodollars, is revolutionizing golf. The Arab SuperLeague seems to be the point of no return for the professional world. The break with what golf was until a few months ago can be seen in big things (millionaire salaries to players) but also in small ones.
An example? On the LIV Golf, pros can wear shorts.
Greg Norman, shorts
Only those unfamiliar with golf will confine this change of course to a trivial matter of outfit. The pro look was a must on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour (former European Tour).
The etiquette of these two circuits requires that, regardless of the climate, the legs are always all covered. Two years ago, the possibility of wearing pants below the knee on the test ride or in the Pro-Am seemed like a semi-revolution.
To date, on the European Tour only in races in South Africa are shorts allowed in the race. Now, instead, everyone is free. It is clear that we are faced with a precise marketing strategy to further distinguish the LIV Golf races from those of the classic circuits.
The idea is simple: we are different from them. “We of the Arab SuperLeague are the ones who play only three days, who have eliminated the cut, who have paid millions of dollars to whoever wins but we give a lot of them even to those who arrive last, who organize a media show behind each event …
and who they make the professionals play in shorts ”. 19 of the 48 professionals on the field in the Boston leg of the LIV Golf where, moreover, the average temperature was around 26 degrees responded to Norman’s opening.
Gregory John Norman, aka Greg (Mount Isa, February 10, 1955), is an Australian golfer and entrepreneur nicknamed The White Shark or simply The Shark [1]. He has proved to be one of the most loved golfers by the public, both for his particular aggressive playing style and for his charismatic attitudes and the same look inspired by a veiled transgressive non-conformism.
[2] He is considered to be one of the most accomplished golfers of the 1980s and 1990s, even though he has not achieved all the goals that seemed within his reach. Animated by a passion for golf since he was a teenager, he began to achieve significant results in the international field already in the second half of the seventies.
Best player in the world from 1986 to 1997, he won the World Matchplay tournament three times (1980, 1983, 1986), the Australian Masters (1980, 1983, 1984) and twice the British Masters (1981 and 1982). In 1993 he won the British Open with a record of 267 strokes over the four days of competition.
In 1994 he won the American professional championship in which he also set a record of 264 shots, a limit still undefeated. Three times he was the best of the season in terms of PGA Tour awards. However, Norman has not been able to combine his technical and physical skills with a sufficient continuity of action and concentration in Major tournaments, so much so that he knows several second places during his career in which he won 91 titles (until October 2001) , of which only two were from the Grand Slam: the 1986 and 1993 Open Championships.
[3] He has long occupied the first position in the world ranking of the best golfers. Despite some downturns due to the physical and mental strain of his long career, Norman has practically always remained among the top five golfers in the world. In 2001 he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
