Greg Norman reflects on his maiden professional win at Adelaide’s Grange Golf Club 47 years ago, bringing LIV Golf Down Under and his surprising reaction when Cam Smith signed on the dotted line.
IT’S 1976 and I had just turned professional. In my first two tournaments, I finished third in the Queensland Open and third in a tournament down in Bateman’s Bay. I was heading to Adelaide for the West Lakes Classic at Grange Golf Club’s East course, feeling pretty bolstered with confidence.
▶ ▶ ▶
I was rooming with a guy called Bryan Smith, a golf pro up around Maroochydore now, I think. ‘Smithy’ and I were great mates, and we did a lot of travelling together when we were younger. I’ll never forget going down to Adelaide for our first practice session. I looked at the Grange and I thought, Holy s–t, this is such a great little golf course. And I say little in the fact that every dogleg on the course, I could fly it over the corner. So, I figured it was such a short golf course for me, because I could take so many angles away. Nine holes in, I’m going, S–t, it’s going to be a fun week for me. Never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate the way I played that week. I just took it on, bit between the teeth, and just said, “OK, I’m driving the ball great. I’m just going to fire it over the corner of the doglegs.” I’ll never forget the spectators that week – I was hitting it over their heads on certain holes.
▶ ▶ ▶
When I ended up with that 10-shot lead after three rounds, it hit me.
I woke up early Sunday morning going, Oh my gosh, I’ve never been in this position before. What do I do? How do I change? What do I expect out of myself? Do I do my normal stuff and take it over the corners again, or do I play conservative? I was in this real conundrum, mentally, about how to keep going. Anyway, thank God, I had a 10-shot lead because I had names like Bruce Devlin and David Graham chasing me down. Walking on the driving range on Sunday and seeing those guys that you’ve always looked up to and have really been the standard bearer for Australian golf right across the board, that was special. There were a few Americans in the field that I didn’t know, but having USA behind their names only added to the nerves. I felt like, OK, these guys are better than any one of us. It was intimidating. I never expected my meteoric rise that week, to be in that position on that driving range on a Sunday.
▶ ▶ ▶
Sunday arrives and I started questioning myself. I can’t remember what hole it was, but somewhere around the sixth or seventh I had a difficult tee shot. I had been leaking a little bit of oil and I just said to myself, “Take it on, Greg. Take it on!” And I hit this towering shot, and that was it. That put an end to the question marks in my head. I would go on to win my first tournament by five shots and cash my first big cheque, about $8,000 from memory. When Dad passed away last year, Mum found the shirt that I wore on that Sunday at Grange. It’s still framed. It’s always cool to look back on that incredible week.
▶ ▶ ▶
When Smithy came out on the 18th green with the champagne popping all over the place, I was in an awkward position. I felt a little embarrassed, as weird as that may sound, but I didn’t know how to react. And then, the final coup de gras of feeling uncomfortable was when we went into the clubhouse and I had to make a little speech. It was my first speech ever to a group of people after winning a golf tournament. I just went, Holy s–t. I was a bit of an introvert, I really was. Smithy and I had been sitting in the corner, having a beer, and my name gets called up and you go, OK, what do I say? As I walked up to the podium, I was going off memory of what athletes on TV say after winning, how they thank people and I just did that. I probably stumbled and blundered my way through it, but that was my last moment of intimidation for that week – that speech.
▶ ▶ ▶
To be able to bring a world-class golf tournament back to the site of my first victory means a lot. It’s almost like a universal circle given my family heritage in South Australia, relatives that landed at Port Lincoln all those years ago. I remember going to Port Lincoln when I was to design a golf course, and I started to get really emotional because of my ancestral ties to the area. I thought, This is where it all started. Not surprisingly, my love affair for great white sharks also grew. Doing shark dives down there, there just seems to be so many crazy touch points of life and history – even pre my birth – that when I put it all together, my journey and my ability to now bring LIV Golf back to South Australia was basically paved by more than a century of personal connections. It really is a wonderful feeling.
▶ ▶ ▶
Every time I’ve gone back to South Australia to do work at Grange Golf Club, I feel like I’m walking into the open arms of loving parents and people. It feels like I’ve always had this deep connection with the smallest ‘big’ city in the country. My Greg Norman Estates wine business evolved out of my passion for Australian wine and was inspired largely by the incredible culture the Barossa Valley is famous for. It’s absolutely crazy to think where we are today and an absolute honour, as the head of LIV Golf, to be able to do what we’re doing for the South Australian people. The whole process with the premier and his team has just been incredibly seamless and overwhelmingly supportive. The sell-out of tickets… if we wanted to put another 40,000 tickets out there, I’m pretty sure we’d sell them. Every quality indicator shows that the product we have, the format we have, the players we have, the world is speaking – the world is speaking that they love it, and they’re supportive of it. None more so than the city of Adelaide.
▶ ▶ ▶
I’ve always felt sorry for Australia. The Australian public want to see the best players in the world. That’s one of the reasons why I constantly and consistently went back to Australia when I was the No.1 player in the world, to show the Australian public some high-quality golf. We’ve always been the forgotten stepchild, to a degree. Apart from the odd Presidents Cup, there wasn’t any consistent pathway to bring high-quality professional golf to Australia. So, I’m not going to go into the politics of it all but at the end of the day, the players came because they got paid appearance money. Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer led the way, led the charge, with Kerry Packer trying to get the Australian Open to be the fifth Major. But we could never get a tournament of any shape or form where it was supported by the best players in the world. And that’s always been that way. So, from my perspective, getting the best in the world down here – forget OWGR points – I mean, we’ve got 20 of the best players in the world, there’s no question about it. And so, for Australians, sporting fanatics, I knew LIV Golf would be well received. To be honest, we could probably do three or four LIV events in Australia. You could easily do Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, because that’s the personality of the Australian sporting public. They love this stuff… and they haven’t even seen it yet.
▶ ▶ ▶
When Cam Smith signed with LIV Golf, I was quietly emotional. I reached out to him, not immediately because I just wanted to let him breathe a little bit. I never tried to push Cam into a decision. I had a conversation with him and talked to him about it, answered his questions and concerns, but I took a step back because I wanted him to make his own decision for the right reasons. I remember the conversation I had with Cam, explaining to him about the opportunity of creating generational wealth through owning a franchise. It was very difficult for some players to grasp all of that, because we’re independent contractors. But once Cam started grasping the fact that he would own the Australian market, that he could actually reach up and own part of the Pacific Rim, because of Australia’s connection up there, all of a sudden, I think the penny dropped.
▶ ▶ ▶
Yes, LIV has paid big sign-on fees for top players. But when people talk about, “We pay these people to show up and play,” let’s just take Rory McIlroy as an example. If Rory goes to Dubai, what would Rory get just to show up in Dubai? $2 million? $2.5 million? Maybe $3 million, to go play one tournament? So, I look at it this way: if you play 14 tournaments and each of the top players gets X amount of money in appearance money to go play, and they played maybe three or four times, but now you’re playing 14 times, you’re basically paying them that commitment fee to show up. Break it down in the most simplistic of forms, that’s what our up-front payments are: appearance fees that cover 14 events. Cam got it. And that’s why Cam came on board. And obviously with very, very strong support with Marc Leishman, too.
▶ ▶ ▶
Will the teams format really appeal to the players? I’ll give you an example. I was with them recently in Jeddah for the Saudi International, and I was talking to Cam and the guys. Cam said: “We just had an off-site session with our team.” I said, “Where did you guys go?” He said, “We pulled them all into Jacksonville and we practised together, we had dinner together, we did this, we did that. We talked about how we’re doing.” I thought, F–k yes, drop the mic. This is what it’s all about, right? The Four Aces were the same. Dustin Johnson did the same with his team in Florida. These guys are getting together. The Majesticks are doing it all the time. Sergio’s done it and nobody’s hearing about it. Nobody’s hearing about this excitement that these guys are building within each team to get the maximum value they can get out of it.
