Greg Norman says top-ranked players ‘excited’ as big-money tour takes shape.

Norman doesn’t want you calling it the Saudi golf league. He does acknowledge that the majority of the funding comes from the vast investment fund called PIF, a private Saudi company overseen by Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and linked, according to a U.S. intelligence report, to the death of the columnist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi.

There’s so much going on here it’s head-spinning. Let’s start with the concept — 54 holes, team play and individual play, 48 golfers — and how Norman and his team came up with it. Norman attended his first Ryder Cup last year at Whistling Straits, where he was doing radio commentary.

“I’ve never seen a team event with energy like that, and that was a gobsmack moment,” Norman, a native Australian who has lived in South Florida for decades, said Wednesday from a sleek, sun-drenched office in a high-rise in West Palm Beach.

Norman’s remarks here have been lightly edited and reordered for clarity.

“To see the interactions of players who weren’t playing on the first tee, engaging with the fans? Man, it put goosebumps on me and I’m not even American or European. I saw the value of what team sport does, the camaraderie of the players, how they want to represent their team or their country or their playing partner that given day. It was a moment. I was really into it from an emotional standpoint, from a player standpoint.

“So for me, and Sean [Bratches, a LIV Golf executive], we both got hit in the forehead with this massive energy: ‘Look at the fans, this is what they want! Individual as well as team [competitions]’. And that’s what we’re having right here, with LIV Golf.”