Norman wants to see Tour's books
The request is not a new one. Seemingly every few years or so a journeyman golfer inquires about reviewing the PGA Tour's financial details. The most recent came last November when Sean Murphy, a rank-and-file player who, like many of the others, seemed destined to be tilting at windmills.
This time around, however, the name behind the request is more high profile. It's Greg Norman who wants to see the books, and he contends the PGA Tour is slow-playing him. High-powered attorney Leonard Decof is on the case, representing Norman. Letters are being filed, a lawsuit is on hold and players are talking.
If it looks like another Norman-Tim Finchem spitting match that goes back to the commissioner's snuffing out the Shark's concept of a world tour in the 1990s, well, that's part of it -- but not all.
"The past never goes away," Norman said last Friday from his office in Jupiter, Fla. "Even now Scott McCarron stays at my beach house and we work out last night and the conversation comes up about the FedEx Cup. The wound gets ripped wide open."
Norman's view is that as a tour member, he's entitled to see the financials and the minutes of all its meetings. "It's their fiduciary responsibility," he said. (He also has a business relationship with the tour as a golf course architect for a handful of sites that host tournaments.)
Decof, the longtime legal nemesis of the tour -- he represented Ping in the famous square-grooves case -- believes so as well. The posturing has been ongoing for months, but Norman decided to go public after his demands were circulated in a memo to members of the Players Advisory Council, Policy Board and Independent Board of Directors.
PGA Tour co-COO Ed Moorhouse confirmed the tour has been in touch with Norman and Decof. "We've offered to sit down and answer any specific questions," he told Golf World Monday. "To this point he has not availed himself of that, but we are ready to sit down and discuss any questions he has."
"They're looking for a way to compromise," noted Decof. "They want us to submit our questions, and they'll answer them. That's not what we want. Under law, every person has [the] right to access the books. It's an absolute right. The players don't know what's going on. They go to those meetings and they get mumbo-jumbo. Greg wants to know what's going on in a corporation that he's a member of. You can't do that by answering questions."
Tim Rosaforte is a senior writer for Golf World magazine
