2 big golf jobs need filling, and both come with pressing challenges

The past 12 months had it all — crazy winning streaks, new major champs, a major-week arrest (!) and more. With 2025 on the horizon, our writers are looking back at the most memorable moments from 2024.

No. 15 — Charley Hull goes viral

Biggest Golf Moments of 2024 No. 14: In wild golf landscape, 2 bosses are on their way out

Not long ago, many believed Jay Monahan was in the hot seat in his role as PGA Tour boss. But as we turn the page to 2025, Monahan is still there, and the Tour is still(!) trying to figure out its future in the golf landscape.

But Greg Norman and Mollie Marcoux Samaan are out. Or at least will be soon.

Norman, the sometimes controversial CEO behind LIV Golf, confirmed this month he’ll no longer be LIV’s CEO, a post he’s held since the league’s inception in 2021, with a new face taking over some time in 2025. His first public comments since the change came just a few days after Marcoux Samaan unexpectedly announced she’ll step down as the LPGA commissioner in January. She was hired in May 2021 and will leave before her contract is up.

The similarities, for the most part, end there. Norman was a crucial cog in shaking up the pro-golf landscape, getting LIV Golf off the ground and helping recruit talent away from the PGA Tour. Marcoux Samaan wasn’t exactly throwing wrenches in golf’s ecosystem.

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They did, however, share one common goal — expanding their tours’ reach and making them more relevant. You could argue that’s a key duty for any CEO in any role, but it was especially true for this duo.

Norman had to change minds. His detractors didn’t like the Saudi PIF funding his league, or the fact that Norman had a hand in diluting men’s pro golf. But Norman did do well to lure away big names like Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith, Bryson DeChambeau and especially Jon Rahm, whose signing came less than a year after he had won the Masters.

Marcoux Samaan didn’t have to deal with the baggage that has come with disrupting pro golf’s ecosphere, but she was tasked with getting more eyeballs on and increasings purses for the women’s game. To Marcoux Samaan’s credit, prize money on the LPGA Tour increased by more than 90 percent under her leadership, and next year the sport’s five majors will offer a combined purse of nearly $50 million, roughly double what was offered in 2021, the year she started.

But Norman and LIV never secured a big-time TV deal to maximize viewership (and help credibility), and despite Marcoux Samaan helping players put more money in their pockets, critics wondered if she and the LPGA could have done more to take advantage of Nelly Korda’s historic season and rise to superstardom in women’s sports. There was also the shuttle fiasco at the Solheim Cup and criticism from a crucial sponsor.

Marcoux Samaan’s successor has not been named. Norman says he will still be a part of LIV Golf in some fashion and will reportedly be replaced by former NBA and NHL executive Scott O’Neil.

But some of the same battles Norman and Marcoux Samaan fought will remain for whoever fills their roles. They are big issues that won’t be solved easily.