LIV Golf official says tour will continue, business as usual - ESPN

TORONTO — Rory McIlroy said he hopes the LIV Golf League is going away, but an official for the rival team-focused circuit told ESPN on Thursday that the league being fronted by two-time Open Championship winner Greg Norman isn't going anywhere.

«We know the big picture,» the LIV Golf official said. «We don't know the details because this is the beginning of the [merger and acquisition] process. There's just a lot to be worked through in the coming weeks. I think a lot of our questions will be answered… but the big picture, LIV is not going anywhere.

»We are — and we will continue to be — a stand-alone entity. It is business as usual for us for this year and beyond."

That's what Norman told LIV Golf officials in a teleconference Wednesday. Norman, the league's CEO and commissioner, was kept in the dark — like just about everyone else in men's professional golf — about the new alliance between Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which financed the LIV Golf League, and the PGA Tour and DP World Tour.

Others at the highest levels of the sport don't seem convinced that the LIV Golf League will have a seat at the table in the sport's new global ecosystem. Multiple sources have told ESPN that if there's a team concept in future seasons, it won't be in the form of the LIV Golf League — and it won't include Norman.

«I still hate LIV,» McIlroy said Wednesday. «Like, I hate LIV. I hope it goes away, and I would fully expect that it does. I think that's where the distinction here is. This is the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF — very different from LIV.»

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, brokered the deal with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley and two