Editing Greg Norman (section)

=== World Golf Tour ===
In November 1994 during the [[QBE Shootout|Shark Shootout]], Norman announced a proposed international golf circuit known as the World Golf Tour; the tour would have launched in 1995, and consisted of eight limited field tournaments largely held against PGA Tour events, with fields featuring top players on the [[Official World Golf Ranking|Sony Rankings]]. Each tournament would have offered a $600,000 prize for winners (roughly double that of major U.S. tournaments at the time), while a $1 million bonus would be awarded to the "player of the year" at the end of the season. The tour would be backed by [[Rupert Murdoch]], with [[Fox Sports (United States)|Fox Sports]] televising all events; Norman argued that the PGA Tour had not done enough to grow the game of golf internationally. The announcement provoked criticism, with a lack of concrete detail on the events besides scheduled dates, and newspaper columnists describing Norman as acting "greedy" and "self-serving".<ref name=":1">{{Cite news |date=1994-12-01 |title=Fox Will Keep Eye on Golf Battle : Television: Network won't take part in legal conflicts between PGA Tour and World Tour. |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-12-01-sp-3765-story.html |access-date=2020-11-30 |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |first=Thomas |last=Bonk}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=1994-11-30 |title=PGA Ready to Play Hardball |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/30/sports/pga-ready-to-play-hardball.html |access-date=2025-04-05 |newspaper=The New York Times |page=B18}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite magazine |title=Is pro golf broken? Greg Norman has been saying so for years |url=https://www.golfdigest.com/story/-is-pro-golf-broken--greg-norman-has-been-saying-so-for-years |access-date=2025-04-05 |magazine=Golf Digest |first= Dan |last=Rapaport |date=April 7, 2025}}</ref>

The World Golf Tour had come in the wake of a probe by the U.S. [[Federal Trade Commission]], on whether policies requiring PGA Tour players to obtain an exemption to compete with events that conflict with tour events were a violation of competition law; in 1995, the FTC voted to drop and not take action on the probe. PGA Tour commissioner [[Tim Finchem]] had already threatened to suspend players who compete in breakaway competitions, while [[Arnold Palmer]] gave a speech critical of the proposed event during a meeting of PGA Tour players. Norman attempted to solicit interest from players by slipping contracts under the doors of hotel rooms during the [[Johnnie Walker World Golf Championship]], but no one would respond—signalling an overall lack of interest. Norman was later caught off-guard by the 1997 announcement of the [[World Golf Championships]] (WGC), a PGA Tour-backed series of limited field events with a similar concept to his proposed series.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" />