LIV Golf Investments CEO Greg Norman claimed in an interview with the Washington Post that Tiger Woods turned down an obscene amount of money to join the rival golf league backed by the Saudi Arabia government. Woods, who has played in the Masters and PGA Championship already this year, has provided no indication that he gave serious consideration to the offer.
"Mind-blowingly enormous," said Norman of the size of the offer. "We're talking about high nine digits."
While nine-digit deals are nothing new for LIV Golf, which reportedly offered $100 million to Jack Nicklaus to serve in Norman's role and is paying Dustin Johnson somewhere in the neighborhood of $125 million as a sign-on fee to play in its league, it stands to reason the pitch to Tiger was far higher than either of those.
Despite the temptation of such a payday, the 46-year-old will be going nowhere. He essentially confirmed his stance on the matter ahead of the PGA Championship in May.
"Phil [Mickelson] has said some things that I think a lot of us who are committed to the tour and committed to the legacy of the tour have pushed back against," said Woods at Southern Hills. "But I think that some of his views on how the tour could be run, should be run, been a lot of disagreement there. ... Obviously, we're going to have difference of opinions, how he sees the [PGA] Tour, and we'll go from there."
Woods later added: "I believe in major championships. I believe in big events, comparisons to historical figures of the past. There's plenty of money out here. The Tour is growing. But it's just like any other sport. It's like tennis. You have to go out there and earn it. You've got to go out there and play for it. We have opportunity to go ahead and do it. It's just not guaranteed up front."
The LIV Golf Series Invitational is set to kick off later this week with the inaugural event scheduled for June 9-11 at the Centurion Club in London. Alongside Johnson in the 48-man field are PGA Tour winners Talor Gooch, Kevin Na and Matt Jones as well as former world No. 1s Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer. Na publicly removed himself from the PGA Tour, likely to avoid potential suspension for playing in LIV Golf. The PGA Tour to this point has denied all such waiver requests.
