(홍콩=데일리홍콩) 김한국 기자 = 홍콩 골프 클럽에서 다음 달 3월 8일부터 10일까지 진행되는 LIV골프 홍콩 대회에 앞서 CEO 그렉 노먼(Greg Norman)이 지난 7일 인터뷰를 진행했다.

세계 골퍼 랭킹 1위를 무려 6년 4개월간 유지한 기록을 가진 호주 국적의 그렉 노먼(Greg Norman)은 4일간 72홀로 진행되는 PGA투어 등 제도권 골프 대회가 선수들에게 너무 힘들다고 주장했다. 이에 따라 그렉 노먼(Greg Norman)은 사우디 아라비아 국부 펀드의 도움으로 LIV골프를 설립하고 지난 2022년 6월 9일 첫 투어 이래 3일간 54홀로 진행하는 투어를 진행하고 있다. 또한 그렉 노먼(Greg Norman)은 LIV골프 투어 성적이 세계 랭킹에 반영되도록 스폰서인 ROLEX 등에 로비하고 있다.

한편 미국 도널드 트럼프 전 대통령의 공개적 지지자로 알려진 LIV골프 CEO 그렉 노먼(Greg Norman)은 과거 1979년과 1983년 홍콩 오픈 대회에서 우승한 기록이 있다.

참고: LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman Virtual Interview(Wednesday, 7 February 2024)

Greg Norman: Hello everybody. Good morning. How are you? Good morning to you. Good evening for me.

Emcee: We’ll get right to it. Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s LIV Golf Hong Kong Media Day. We’re delighted to be joined by Greg Norman, LIV Golf CEO, who will share more about what LIV Golf is about, Greg’s connection to Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Golf Club, the significance of LIV Golf’s presence in Hong Kong and Asia, as well as the partnership with Hong Kong Golf Club to stage LIV Golf in Hong Kong.

I’ll kick things off first before we open it up to the floor.

Good morning, Greg, or good evening where you are. Let’s start it off by talking about your links with Hong Kong and the success you’ve had during your playing days. Could you share a bit more about that?

Greg Norman: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got a lot of great memories with Hong Kong, going back to 79 and 83, winning the Hong Kong Open there.

I’ve always been a staunch supporter of Asia and during the time in my infancy as a professional golfer. Also, when I was the number one golfer in the world, I thought it was always important to treat the world the same because the game of golf is treated the same around the world.

So I always wanted to try and grow the game of golf throughout Asia and throughout the world. So when I went there in 79, I was just kind of gobsmacked by Hong Kong, the size of Hong Kong, the magnitude of Hong Kong, the energy of Hong Kong, the people of Hong Kong, the food, everything was just, to me, enormous coming out of Australia, in my first couple of years of playing.

So I was very enamoured by the city. I got to know quite a few people there. Obviously, when I won there with the Hong Kong Golf Club, I got to know people there. Then into the business world as well. So my affinity and association with that part of the world has always been strong.

And I can get into this later on if anybody really wants to know what we did with LIV Golf and investing in the Asian tour. My commitment to back in those younger days was absolutely incredible. And, even with the city today, I enjoyed going back there. I’ve been there numerous times in the past couple of years just to talk about the opportunity of bringing LIV Golf to Hong Kong Golf Club again and back to Hong Kong.

So here we are; we’re going to be there in a couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to seeing all of you.

Emcee: Next question. There are some media present today that might not fully comprehend what LIV Golf is about. Could you just take us through that quickly?

Greg Norman: Yeah, look, LIV Golf is a space in the world of golf that has never been exercised before.

And that’s the franchise model or team model. To get into the team side of golf, you had to understand one thing that’s happened in recent years, and we’ve seen it recently. In the game of golf with the PGA tour, and private equities coming into the game of golf, LIV golf was the catalyst to that.

The reason why we’re the catalyst is that we do have an investor who wanted to get into the game of golf into the franchise model. So this was burgeon space for us. We look at this virgin space as a global platform, not just a domestic platform here in the U.S. or anywhere else. We look at the opportunity as a global opportunity.

So, from my perspective, you’re looking at golf now as an asset class with private equity coming in. Private equity wants to invest in the game of golf to extract an ROI. To get that ROI, you have to have a really comprehensive business model. So, LIV, for years and years and years, pre us launching, we’re building up this model to get this opportunity going.

So what is that? That is 13 teams. The 13 teams, the 13 th team only just came on board recently with the introduction of John Rahm to LIV Golf. His team is called Legion XIII. So the 13 teams are represented by four players per team. The league owns 75% of each team. The captains own 25%, and some own even more of the team.

That depends on the agreement we’ve done. So what you have is players have finally got equity in the game of golf. Which I have been fighting for 35-plus years since 1993. So, finally, the guys are getting the recognition they truly deserve in establishing generational wealth for themselves and developing the game of golf across the planet.

Our teams come from South Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, South America, and Mexico. So we’re very, very diverse. We cover every corner of the earth we possibly can. And we go to, you know, right now this year in 2024, we’re going to eight different countries. So my goal is, as it always has been in the game of golf, to spread the game of golf globally.

And we’re going to do that with LIV, and partnering up with the Hong Kong Golf Club is important because they see the value of what the game of golf has brought Hong Kong over decades and decades and decades. And when you think about the Hong Kong Golf Club, it’s one of the only venues outside of Augusta National that’s been the only golf course that’s hosted a venue for 60 years, since 1959 if my memory’s right.

So 60-plus years. So, for us to partner with them, with Hong Kong, they see the value of what we have. And with the Greater Bay Area with 80 plus million people, what a great catchment area for us to be able to get out there and go after and expand the game of golf. And then we have our ‘Potential Unleash’ where we actually come in and invest in the community.

So everything about LIV Golf is more than golf. We’re about fans, we’re about entertainment, we’re about family, we’re about creating a new culture within the game of golf. Something that’s never been done before and will never be done again in the near future. So I really do thank Hong Kong and the support coming from the Greater Bay Area for the best players in the world that are going to come there.

We have a platform that we transport everywhere around the world. And what does that mean? We own everything. We own the players. We own our production. We own our events management business. We own our own commercial rights deals. So we control the destiny and the partnerships of wherever we want to go.

And it’s been a unique 23 tournaments. It’s been for us to create this tsunami of change in the game of golf, and I’m extremely proud of it now because we’ve unlocked so many new opportunities, new entities, and the PGA Tour themselves have recognized that and they’ve had to adjust and adapt to it for their own right and fair enough. That’s great; we’re happy for them, and I’m so happy for the players on the PGA tour to be able to do that because they are going to get the advantage of private equity coming into them

Emcee: Thank you, Greg. Now we will open it up to the floor. Just raise your hands if you have any questions, and we’ll pass the mic to you.

Q: Hi, Greg. Um, we’ve seen LIV Golf bringing a different experience on the course, using Party holes and all that. Are you, as you take it around the world and expand into new markets this year in Hong Kong, conscious of the fact that different cultures things might you might have to adjust so a party hole works in Adelaide, the same sort of thing might not quite go down as well in say Hong Kong or Bangkok, or somewhere else. How is LIV working with Hong Kong and other venues to sort of tailor make the product to each part of the world?

Greg Norman: Yeah, look, that’s a fantastic question. How we do it is we adjust to the culture of where we are. You’ll see that with our opening ceremony, we bring the culture in, we adapt the local community into what we’re trying to produce and to deliver. So yes, it’s different.

The music is different, but you know, when you look back over the game of golf, to see the evolution of what’s happened over the last couple of years with speakers in golf carts or speakers hanging off trolleys that people pull behind them. iPhones coming on, not being allowed on the golf course.

Now iPhones are allowed on the golf course. You have to change with the times and make the adjustment through it. Golf has been stuck in a box. For decades and decades and decades, what we’ve done is just given the fans a new opportunity to experience something new. And it’s been received extremely well.

I’ve got to be honest with you. We were going to have two beta seasons, 2022 and 2023 were our beta season. We were going to have eight events in 2022, 10 events in 2023. And this year, 2024 was going to be our official year. We got such positive feedback outside of all the headwinds that were thrown our way by the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour.

We had such positive feedback from the fans from around the world for what we were delivering, the magnitude and the quality of players we were taking to different places around the world that had never seen these players. Take Hong Kong, for example; the amount of quality players we’re going to be putting on Hong Kong’s doorstep and onto the Hong Kong Golf Club’s fairways in a couple of weeks has never been done before.

And other people had to pay to get the players there. I was paid to go to Hong Kong. So they don’t have to pay for it anymore. We deliver this mechanism to them to allow them to experience this new experience. Of course, there have been some adjustments and adaptions. But going back to the beta, 2022 was so successful.

Our investor said to launch in 2023. So we launched our 14-tournament season a year ahead of schedule. So as a startup, the magnitude to make that happen on a global basis, I don’t think whenever I speak to business people, they’re gobsmacked about how quickly we got this thing up and running accepted.

Across the planet and operational the way we did. You know, it’s a testament to 172 people who work behind me, and it’s a testament to the game of golf telling us that there was this virgin space that was needed to go come in and be opened up.

Q: What we’ve heard so far is ticket sales have been doing relatively well. Could you just share some pointers with regard to what you’ve seen on that front?

Greg Norman: Our ticket sales have shown they’ve come from 26 different countries, which is an incredible number when you think about it. So well, ticket sales are just going to continue to climb and climb and climb. And the more you guys write about it, the more it’s discussed and the more, well, look, LIV Mexico was last week, right?

So the more this gets out there, the more excitement is going to happen. And the more you talk about the quality of players, the John Rahm’s coming on, you know Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Cam Smith, the Bubba Watsons. I can go down the list on and on and on and on with the quality of players.

Ticket sales, from our perspective, will continue to grow and grow and grow. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s one of our top ticket sales for the year.

Q: We have a lot of young children who may not have the money to come, and would you have special arrangements for children to come to experience LIV Golf?

Greg Norman: It’s about pathways and giving opportunities for people to come play. Yeah, we do that. I’ll just address that if that’s the answer to your question.

We do have a pathway system for younger players. That’s why I invested in the Asian Tour. Like I said, at the top of our interview, we invested 300 plus million into the Asian tour. I knew it was a sleeping giant for many, many decades, and we wanted to give that an opportunity in the pathway for the players to get on to LIV Golf.

We also have the International Series, the 10 events we have around the World. It’s not geofenced or anything. We take 10 events around the world. Gives also the opportunity for younger players to come in. Now, if I think I read your question right in another way from a CSR program, we come in, and we invest in the local community.

We identify the opportunities for younger generations to come and experience it. We do it here in the United States. Actually, we do it everywhere around the world. That to me is very sensitive because I want to take golf, not just for the education of the game of golf and how to play it.

But I want to take it to the education of people about whether they are interested in golf. Is that hospitality? Is that agronomy? Is that the education side of it? Is that retail? Is that teaching it? There are many different plethora of different opportunities. The game of golf can give and part of what I want to deliver across the globe, giving these experiences and opportunities for the younger generation, to come and experience it.

So, you know, we, we will be enacting some of that in Hong Kong because it’s in the Greater Bay Area, because that’s a great opportunity for Hong Kong and the local officials to push this out to the younger community as well.

Q: First of all, on behalf of the locals, we are very happy about having LIV in Hong Kong. My question is, when will you include Tiger Woods in your circle?

Greg Norman: Who’s that? Look. I think we are right now fully subscribed. People are talking about us who want to come on board. We have our 54 players. We have two wild card players who play with us each week to make sure we get a full complement of threesomes for the shotgun start. I didn’t mention that at the top either.

It’s a shotgun start. 54 holes where all the players are on the golf course. At the same time, we play an individual in a team format. The players are really focused on the team. To see John Rahm last week, come up with the Legions XIII, his first event and first team event, he was so excited about that.

I know he wanted to win the individual because he’s an individual champion. But he was so excited for his team about winning his team event. So, you know, there’s other players out there. Watching what’s happening on LIV, wondering if they’ll ever have an opportunity to get on LIV.

We will just continue to grow and if the opportunity is there for others to come in, we welcome to come in.

Q: I was just wondering, you were talking about the strength of LIV and how it was growing and everything and just the importance of what we saw last weekend with the finish in Mexico compared to what was happening at Pebble. Obviously, Pebble was a no-cut event as well, with a reduced field. So, what are your impressions of that?

Greg Norman: I would say that LIV has been a leader on many fronts. To be honest with you, there’s nothing wrong with 54 holes. There’s nothing wrong with 72 holes. We’ve just identified from a health and wellness perspective, the value of what 54 hole does to our players. They all love the idea. If we made it 72 holes, they play 72 holes. But they love the 54 holes, they love the 14 events because there’s less wear and tear on their body.

I’m an ex-player. I feel for these guys. I know what they go through. I know what they experience. I know what they have to do in the off-season. One of my chief goals for them was to give them time off. Give them recuperating time. Give them time with their family. Go back to Australia. Go back to South Africa. Go back to Chile. Go back to wherever you want to go for three months or four months to practice your game. Be with your friends and your family. Health and wellness was very, very important for me. And so we’ve been a leader on many fronts, not just in the private equity side of things, but also showing that players do deserve different other opportunities of competition.

I think from my perspective, you know the players have embraced exactly what they have and to see them as happy as what they are. We call it, we’re just one big family. And to see him all happy as what they are today is something that I’m very, very proud of, to be honest with you.

Q: I just want to ask you some more general questions about golf. We saw a 59 from Joaquin last week, we saw a 60 shot at the purple. Bryson’s had a 58. We seem to be seeing these incredibly low scores more often now. Is that down to the players being so good, the course not being so tough, the equipment being better? We know the equipment’s better and a supplementary to that. Would you have loved to have played in your prime with the equipment these guys are playing with today?

Greg Norman: Look, that’s two questions. I’ll enter the last one first. Yes, I would love to have played today with the equipment they have, but you know, it’s all relative.

I was the longest driver of the golf ball in my day or one of them, with the equipment we had. So you know, I was still long, I still could hit the golf ball today. Would I hit it further? Damn right. I did it further. Would I wish that I had the ability to play with these guys on LIV Golf? 100%. I would have crossed that rubicon immediately with the opportunity to join and experience what does happen. Back to the low scores. It’s probably a combination of a lot of things. I can tell you with Los Cabos, I designed that golf course, and we set up the fairways very, very narrow, and we gave him a lot of heavy rough.

So it wasn’t because the golf course was easy. It was the quality of play coming out of our players. Um, you know, I know 60 was shot at Pebble Beach, but Pebble Beach was wet and soft and slow. But our golf courses or even where Bryson played and shot his 58. I know other 59s have been shot around the Greenbrier which is a heck of a score.

I followed Joaquin on the day he shot his 59, and he should’ve, could’ve easily shot 57. He missed a four-footer on his 17 th hole, which is the 18 th . And uh, he could easily burn his final hole, which is the first, so it was very obvious that the quality of play these guys can do today.

My final comment on that would be he played well. He won in the Australian Open. He played well in a few other tournaments. His game was strong because he came out of his off-season, physically fit. He worked out hard. He’d worked on his game because he had that time to do that. When myself and many other generations, didn’t have the time to do that.

So there’s a lot of indicators, KPIs, we call them that allows these guys to be able to do that. I think it’ll be interesting to see when the golf ball rolls back a little bit to see if these scores are as regular as what they are.

Q: It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with you today. Could you share some highlights and distinctive features of LIV Golf Hong Kong and what appealed to you the most?

Greg Norman: I know most of our players have not been to Hong Kong, right? Therefore, they haven’t played Hong Kong Golf Club. Hong Kong Golf Club in its own right is just one of the true classics. It’s been around for decades and decades and decades as it tried to adjust to the times of modern technology.

Yes, it has done. Have they done a good job with it? I would say yes, they have done. I have not played the new golf course of the new lay. Well, it’s not a new layout, but some of the extensions and adjustments made to it. I can say from our players’ perspective that they’re all looking forward to getting to the city because those who, you got to remember, most of our professional golfers from LIV have travelled the world.

And to say they haven’t gone to Hong Kong is a bit of an understatement to say, Wow, okay! So to go to one of the major cities of the world, not only from a finance perspective, but just from an entertainment perspective and a beauty perspective, there’s so much, so much happening in Hong Kong.

They can go and experience something new. And I know they’re talking about it, and I think that’s a unique opportunity where we can bring this, this quality and strength of field of players to a new city for them, not just as much as for the city of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Golf Club. So we’re all excited.

I can tell you, we all are very, very excited about getting there.

Q: I have a question. Will be there any Hong Kong players? Will they sign up in the coming March, or if not, how can they play the game or join it in March? Will be there any opportunities to join?

Greg Norman: Yeah, we reached out, we reached out to some. We always give that opportunity.

We have reserves. The opportunity to go to each destination with a reserve group. So there are opportunities for the younger generation. And I’ve got to tell you, I’m a staunch proponent of helping the younger generation. Just look at this young kid called Caleb Surratt. He was in a dormitory studying at a university two weeks ago.

He’s 19 years old. John Rahm thought very, very highly of him and wanted to recruit him. And he comes down to Mexico, plays his very first event, wins the very first team event with John Rahm, and to see the excitement on his face is just unbelievable. Now his runway looking into the future is extremely bright.

John said he was a very talented player. So we recognised that, and we went after it. The same thing is going to happen in Hong Kong. The same thing happens all over the world. What we pride ourselves on is being able to let these young kids see the quality of the players that we have and let them get excited about seeing them, hearing them, talking to them, and understanding the magnitude of being one of the best players in the world can give you and your family.

I’m always open and willing and happy to get as many young kids to experience what LIV Golf is all about.

Q: And thanks for bringing LIV to Hong Kong. Regarding Hong Kong Golf Club, it’s a century-old golf club. And can you share with us what sort of collaboration or assistance the golf club has provided to LIV and also the government?

Greg Norman: Look, that’s a great question. It’s a collaborative effort. Frank, you know, on everybody’s behalf, right? We’re getting inundated from different countries around the world who want to host LIV Golf events now, right? We had a meeting the other day where we went through, I think, it was 24 different opportunities to take LIV Golf to in 2025.

Hong Kong was a pleasure to work with. Hong Kong Golf Club, the captain and the president there, I made a couple of trips there, to be honest with you, to meet them. I even met some of the local business people and CEOs when I was last in town. So it’s a collaborative effort from us that LIV Golf, from the government, from the golf club, from the local community to make this happen.

Remember, we’re coming in there as a partner. We’re not coming in there for any other reason than to be partnering with the region, to grow the region, to develop the region, and expose the region – the Greater Bay Area – to the rest of the world for people who tune in. So, it’s very much a symbiotic collaborative effort by all of us to make this happen.

Q: Would this be a one-stop event or continue next year in Hong Kong as well?

Greg Norman: Yeah, look, the door is always open for discussions to keep going forward, right? I mean, the success and the willingness for everybody to look, we just signed a deal for another venue and they wanted to go out to 2030.

So these opportunities on a global front are there. Hong Kong is no different than that,
Frank.

Emcee: Thank you, Greg, for joining us today, and we wish you and the LIV Golf team a successful Las Vegas event.

Greg Norman: Yeah, thank you very much, everybody and Happy Chinese New Year, everybody as well!