Tiger Woods refused Greg Norman gesture and ignored LIV Golf CEO due to 'hatred'

13 December 2023 , 18:41

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Tiger Woods and Greg Norman do not see eye-to-eye (Image: PA)

Tiger Woods and Greg Norman's feud is one that dates back well before the PGA Tour's recent battle with LIV Golf.

Norman is the man that has led the LIV setup since it formation last summer, an established it as a fierce rival to the PGA Tour at the top of the golfing pyramid. Norman and co have been able to lure in a whole host of the Tour's biggest names, a move that has not been taken lightly by the American-based circuit.

Amid the drama and mega-money offers, one man who unsurprisingly opted to remain loyal to the PGA Tour is the circuit's biggest name in 82-time winner Woods.

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Numerous reports have revealed the 2019 Masters champion was offered the chance to join the likes of Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka in signing for the Saudi-funded series, with an alleged £800 million offer said to be on the table for golf's poster boy.

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Of course Woods never opted to take up the eye-watering deal, and it comes as no surprise following his past with Norman. After Woods' iconic victory at Augusta National four years ago, Norman revealed he left a hand-written letter to the 15-time major winner at his Jupiter home, but never heard back.

"Very few people know this," Norman told Mens Health in 2019. "When Tiger won the Masters this year, I wrote him a handwritten note and drove down my road, maybe a quarter of a mile, and hand-delivered it to his guard at his gate.

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Tiger Woods refused Greg Norman gesture and ignored LIV Golf CEO due to 'hatred'

Tiger Woods took aim at Greg Norman (AP)

"I said, 'Hey, this is Greg Norman here. I’ve got a note for Tiger – can you please hand-deliver it to him?' Well, I never heard a word back from the guy. When I won my first major championship, Jack Nicklaus was the first person to walk down out of the TV tower and congratulate me.

"I don’t know—maybe Tiger just dislikes me." Whilst Norman was unable to earn a response out of the 82-time PGA Tour winner in 2019, the former world No. 1 found himself at the forefront of Woods' thoughts following's LIV's burst onto the scene last summer.

Prior to this June's proposed peace deal in the form of a framework agreement between the PGA Tour and LIV backers, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF), there appeared to be no end in sight to golf's civil war.

Last winter Woods highlighted Norman as the key issue in the feud, calling on the Australian to step aside from his CEO role in order to allow the two rivals to peacefully co-exist. “Greg has to go,” Woods said last November. "And then obviously litigation against us and then our countersuit against them, those would then have to be at a stay as well.

"So then we can talk, we can all talk freely." In typical Norman fashion though, the breakaway league boss was quick to respond. Returning the favour, the LIV CEO labelled Woods nothing more than a 'PGA Tour mouthpiece', and questioned his knowledge surrounding the breakaway league.

“Well, I think, yeah, sad for Tiger,” Norman said in response in an interview with Fox in January. “You know, unfortunately he made a comment that he doesn’t know the facts about, because obviously I’m still here. Obviously he doesn’t control what we do with LIV.

"So just making those comments I think is an indication that he might be a bit of a mouthpiece for the PGA Tour to try and get us to create, or get turmoil created internally within LIV. “But it’s not happening. We are fully entrenched. We know where we are going. We know what we’re doing.”