The Great White Shark is a very interesting person to have heading up this new venture, you'll have to cast your mind back 30 years where he was proposing that there should be a world Super League for golf, possibly even a world champion, which would elevate the game to another level where there is one defined winner across the world. This obviously directly threatens the PGA Tour and the new DP World Tour as they don't want to see their best players playing for a different master, especially one which has deeper pockets and a much bigger war chest than they have ever had.
Norman, when he was the world number one, was very vocal about the fact that the Tour works for the players, spiky and controversial but nonetheless very accurate as the Tour has nothing unless the players are superstars. One of the famous comments that he made was ‘he works weekends and the majority of staff affiliated to the Tour don't.’
Another reason why he is an interesting person to have figure heading this breakaway Tour is that he is an incredibly successful businessman outside of golf, has past Presidents of the United States on speed dial. In fact, if you remember when Bill Clinton broke his arm in Australia, that actually happened in Norman's kitchen quite late on in the evening. The point being that the Saudis have recruited a heavily connected business Titan who has an axe to grind against the establishment of both DP and PGA Tours.
He hasn't been quiet on his point of view that the Tours could be more business minded and player friendly, meaning that players should and could play for more money. With him representing this new tool they certainly can. The money being offered is eyewatering but that doesn't mean everything.
I believe the real problem that this new breakaway Tour has is that just like normal human beings, players have a resistance to change alongside relationships and loyalty which have been around for decades. After all the Tours did give the players the opportunity to play for the money that they now have in their bank accounts. Saudi Arabia or the Middle East is a long way from home not to mention some of the less than savoury news accounts about human rights violations is a pretty good reason for not wanting to play.
Will money be the ultimate persuader, it's going to be interesting to see. With there already being two major Tours in the world can a third with deep pockets capture enough of the market to make them a world tour? TV scheduling will be difficult because the American market is around 12 hours behind. The Masters, U.S. Open, Open Championship, and U.S. PGA are enormous brands with significant pulling power. After all, the measure of a player is how many majors he has won. Will they be able to muscle in and put a major championship in the Middle East? That would be interesting.
What is safe to say is this story has a long way to go. The DP and PGA Tour hate change and losing power more than anything which has led to a strategic alliance between the two. They are now coordinating their efforts against a single entity.
I can only imagine that Greg Norman has more than enough fight in him for this to go a number of rounds, but the ultimate decider as to whether or not it's going to work is going to be you and me, are we interested in how much the players are playing for compared to our habitual TV watching and love of all things familiar.
If we don't watch, does it really matter?