After WGC Events Were Created in Part Due to Greg Norman, Is He the Cause of Their Demise?

In addition to golf’s version of March Madness coming to an end in 2023, this year’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play also appears to be the final event of the 24-year run of the World Golf Championships event.

The spark that created the series of big-money events and the final nail in its coffin can be attributed to one man—LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman.

Once again, Greg Norman making a huge impact on the PGA Tour.

Thanks to Greg’s first attempted world tour, we have the WGC….

Now with Greg’s LIV, PGA will offer larger purses, travel stipends, and pocket change for missed cuts

Once again strengthening the PGA.

Perfect!!

— Jim Cooney (@Coondawg069) August 24, 2022

The series was introduced in 1997 as a joint effort by the PGA Tours International Federation. The goal of the WGC—stop us if you’ve heard this before—was to have the world’s best players to compete against each other more often. As a result, the WGC events had the best fields and largest purses outside the four majors.

It was born from an attempt by Norman—again, stop us if you’ve heard this before—to start an elite golf tour of his own. At the time the WGC concept was announced in 1997, Norman said he felt vindicated:

”I think it had to happen. ‘It’s good for the game. I took a lot of heat and a lot of criticism early on, which hurt. Hopefully, the arrows can come out of my back now and we can all go forward.”

The WGC’s settled into four events per year—three stroke-play events and the popular Match Play. The WGC-HSBC Champions event in China hasn’t been contested since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The WGC Invitational (now the FedEx St. Jude in Memphis) and the WGC Championship (now The American Express in California) were last played in 2021.

Now, the Match Play is coming off the 2024 schedule. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said that the creation of the “designated events”—big money tournaments with an elite field—made the WGC tournaments expendable.

Monahan said earlier this month:

“Right now, you see the direction the PGA Tour’s heading in. It is with these designated events; it’s with the concentration of the best players on the PGA Tour competing in them, I really don’t expect that to change as we go forward.” 

Of course, the recent changes to the PGA Tour are also due to Norman—this time, his involvement in the creation of LIV Golf, which has lured some of the PGA Tour’s top stars to the new league through huge money guarantees and a more manageable schedule.

The 2023 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play is the 79^th WGC individual event, and it should come as no surprise that the king of the WGC tournaments is Tiger Woods, who won 18 of them. Here he is, winning the 2006 Match Play event.

📺 The WGC Matchplay is here this week, and it’s a great time to relive this beauty!

Tiger Woods, what a man. pic.twitter.com/5cvGxBtJRR

— BETDAQ (@BETDAQ) March 22, 2023

This weekend, Scottie Scheffler is looking to become the first person other than Woods to defend a WGC title.

Cover Image Via UK Sports News