AUGUSTA, Ga. — The best spot to mingle at Augusta National Golf Club is under The Big Oak Tree. There you’ll find some of the game’s most important people, power brokers, celebrities and players’ family members.
Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, and Keith Pelley, who runs the DP World Tour, have both been spotted there this week. As for the leader of pro golf’s other prominent men’s league? Greg Norman is nowhere to be found.
“Funnily enough, I haven’t been invited,” Norman told The Telegraph on Sunday. “As a major winner I always was before, but they only sent me a grounds pass last year and nothing, zilch, this time around. I’m disappointed because it’s so petty but of course I’ll still be watching.”
In his annual state of the Masters press conference on Wednesday at Augusta, chairman Fred Ridley explained why.
“We did not extend an invitation to Mr. Norman,” he said. “The primary issue and the driver there is that I want the focus this week to be on the Masters competition, on the great players that are participating, the greatest players in the world, which, by our decision in December, we ensured that we were going to honor and be consistent with our invitation criteria. I would also add that, in the last 10 years, Greg Norman has only been here twice, and I believe one of those was as a commentator for Sirius Radio [in 2021].”
Norman is the chief executive of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, which officially launched last summer, taking players away from the PGA Tour and creating a divide in the pro game that’s still not completely healed.
This is the first Masters since LIV Golf, which has 18 players here, has formed.
Asked if Norman would ever be welcomed back to the Masters, Ridley said he’d “never say never.”
Unraveling one of the Masters’ greatest unwritten traditions
“The tone has been really good here this week,” Ridley said. “I’ve noticed the players are interacting. Last night at the Champions Dinner, I would not have known that anything was going on in the world of professional golf other than the norm. So I think, and I’m hopeful, that this week might get people thinking in a little bit different direction and things will change.”
Norman won’t be at Augusta, but several of his players will be. He told The Telegraph he’s hoping for a LIV winner. Dustin Johnson (+2500) and Cameron Smith (+2800) have the best odds to win among the LIV players.
“They’ve said that if one of them wins then the other 17 will hang around and be there to congratulate him around the 18th green,” Norman said. “Could you imagine what a scene that would be, all these players hugging the winner. You only see things like that in the Ryder Cup, although it’s happening in our events more and more.”
