Shotgun Starts, Shorts and Sounds: Taking in LIV Golf From the Grounds

Gary Van Sickle checked out LIV Golf Chicago and found the setup and amenities enjoyable. Whether the on-course action is compelling is up to you.

SUGAR GROVE, Ill. — The tallest of the foursome held a tall boy, an oversized can of undetermined beer heritage because it was partially covered by a foam holder. Miller? Colt 45? Corona? I couldn’t tell.

These four guys, in their early 20s, trekked 425 miles due east from Omaha to see what LIV Golf was about. They parked next to me in the huge field across the road from the LIV Golf entrance at Rich Harvest Farms golf club and in the time it took to pry myself out of the front seat, pop open the trunk and pull on some golf shoes, they were tailgating from the back of their SUV, which was laden with four golf bags. Tailgating may be overstating things. They had no food, just drinks. They had already played golf before coming here with a few (or possibly more than a few) adult beverages.

These gents were here for one reason. Two, technically. First, they’d scored free passes from the LIV Golf player’s caddie they knew. Second, they were here to watch golf.

Stripped to its basics and regardless of the business and politics, the essence of LIV Golf is this: It is simply more professional golf. Do you like to watch pro golf? Well, here you go, help yourself.

Is there room in the entertainment marketplace for more golf? The answer, at least based on this field covered by hundreds of parked cars, appears to be "yes." Normally, the marketplace would decide the answer. In this case, it will be decided by the Saudi-backed government fund bankrolling an endeavor that throws million-dollar bundles around as if they’re nickels. This is not a for-profit venture so the usual rules of capitalism don’t apply. LIV will live as long as the Saudi dollars keep flowing.

LIV Golf has attitude and describes itself as “Golf But Louder!” We parked about one par-5's distance from the entrance and we could hear the music coming from the clubhouse as the players warmed up on the range before their shotgun start.

The Nebraskans wanted to talk LIV Golf. I asked the group if they knew who was next-to-last on the money list among players who competed in the first four events. There was momentary silence. “Phil Mickelson?” guessed the shorter guys wearing shades. Correct.

They wondered if I, as an expert media guy, had any inside dope on who might do well here. “The golf course is funky, spread out and hard to walk,” I said. “I don’t know who it favors but Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith are the best players in the field every week.”

Before the LIV Golf shotgun start clock gets to zero, you'll want to have a plan as a fan :: Jamie Sabau/USA Today

Their tailgate session was brief. It had to be. The 12:15 p.m. shotgun start was approaching. They finished their drinks, locked up their SUV and headed out.

Their spectating plan? “We’re going to the fifth hole to get ahead of the crowd,” Tall Guy said. “Then we’ll stay there and watch all the top players go through.”

I asked if there was a beer concession near the fifth hole. “There better be,” he said.

Here are the top observations from my in-person LIV Golf experience ...

The Shorts

Yes, it was weird seeing PGA Tour players wearing shorts in practice rounds last year, a new development. Now the LIV Golf players are allowed to wear shorts in competition, another step in defining their differences with traditional tour golf.

I don’t mind seeing the shorts. It doesn’t ruin the experience. It makes these guys look less super-human at golf and more like us. That’s a plus. I saw Scott Vincent, with long, flowing locks of hair down his back, wearing black golf shoes and calf-cut black socks. I wouldn’t do that but I’ll concede that as a fashion choice.

Conclusion: Shorts, yes. But if hoodies are next, not so fast …

The Countdown

As tee time approached, the large stage near the clubhouse, which has a jumbo video screen and is where the nightly rock acts perform, flashed the countdown until the 12:15 shotgun start.

An announcer hit the high points. “One minute … 50 seconds …” Finally, he urged fans to join him in counting down the final 10 seconds. “Five, four, three, two, one!” Sizzling sparklers shot up in the air in front of the stage for maybe 10 seconds. Somewhere, the late Michael Jackson was probably thinking, “You know this can go badly wrong, right?”

Few fans remained in the fan village area for the countdown. They had already headed out onto the course.

Conclusion: The countdown probably looked good on camera but if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see it, did the squirrel it fell on make a noise?

The Known Quantity

One thing LIV Golf offers that the PGA Tour hasn’t in the past is the NASCAR-like understanding that all of its top drivers/players will be racing/competing.

If you buy a LIV Golf ticket, you know you’re going to see Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood and other familiar names. Of course, you also get plenty of Laurie Canter, Wade Ormsby, Turk Pettit, James Piot and Sadom Kaewkanjana and other unfamiliar names. Only 48 players but largely the same 48.

Conclusion: A guaranteed field one-ups the PGA Tour. But 48 players instead of the traditional field of 120, 144 or 156? It doesn’t feel like a real tournament.

The Shotgun Start

This is a untraditional way to start a professional tournament. Visually, it looks like crap. The loudspeaker kept giving players updates about when they needed to be in their carts so they could be driven to their respective tees. Even after the last warning, some players and caddies (and ride-along wives and girlfriends) weren’t in their carts and ready. “This is just like a pro-am at home,” said a male fan standing behind me.

Once the carts start pulling away in a not-very-organized manner, you will not mistake it for the starting lap at the Indy 500 or the old running start at LeMans. Maybe I imagined it but some of the players looked slightly sheepish as they drove past a line of spectators using phones to shoot video.

The shotgun start disperses fans well but getting the players, caddies and others on their way via an army of carts can be awkward (pictured is the LIV Golf event in Boston) :: Richard Cashin/USA Today

On the plus side, it’s a great way to get everyone on the course at once and a great way to disperse the gallery. A big crowd was on hand Saturday—I can’t guess the number but the field across the road was slammed and it was one gosh-darn (pardon my language) big field. The shotgun start solves the usual tournament problem of a logjam around the first tee and gets players onto every hole immediately. That means fans parked at the 18th green don’t have to wait two hours to see the first golfers who teed off at No. 10. They see action within minutes.

It is untraditional, yes, and it breaks the sacred rule about letting players ride in carts, yes, but it works in a smaller 48-man field like this. After the first round, the reward for being among the leaders is that you get to tee off on No. 1. A fellow media member looked at the leaderboard Saturday afternoon and noticed that first-round leader Dustin Johnson had dropped a stroke. Where did he start, he asked? On No. 1, I said. He chuckled and said, “Right, of course. I asked that without even thinking.” If Johnson hadn’t been the first-round leader, it would have been a good question.

Conclusion: A cautious thumbs up for the awkward shotgun start. (But not at the Masters, please. Can you imagine some player starting his round at No. 12 on a windy day? Nobody wants to go ugly early.)

The Music

This is becoming more common in recreational golf as some players bring speakers to attach to their cart so the group has music all day. It’s also a bone of contention for some who don’t want music or don’t like the music that’s playing. (Yo, you got a problem with Black Sabbath?)

At Rich Harvest Farms, the music was loudest near the clubhouse in the area called the fan village. There’s a stage there where rock concerts were held post-round Friday and Saturday featuring, in order, St. Lucia and Jason Derulo. (They’re not on my iPod. What? Yeah, I still use an iPod. What do I use my cell phone for? Phone calls.)

As I walked in Saturday morning, I heard marching band music provided by The Pack Drumline. It gave me college-football goosebumps.

I enjoy music playing in the cart when someone else brings it, but I never bring my own. I watched Ian Poulter get ready to play a pitch shot to the 18th green Friday afternoon. Spectators in the mezzanine areas behind the green were drinking, some were talking, others were moving around. When fans are supposed to be dead quiet, any little noise is jarring and distracting. The music drowns out those voices and clinking glasses and creates a white-noise background that I liked. And have you been to a movie theater in the last year? People can no longer shut their yaps. I saw one LIV Golf marshal hold up a paddle on another that read, “Zip it!”

Poulter played his shot as if nothing unusual was going on. Without the music, he might have had to step back.

Conclusion: The Poulter moment convinced me that music is a definite improvement around the greens. Even better, it adds a little sense of excitement to the tournament atmosphere.

The Carnival

You know how there are brands with lime- or strawberry-flavored beer? It’s beer for people who don’t really like beer. LIV Golf crushes the PGA Tour when it comes to having other things to do at the course for spectators.

The carnival-like games in the fan village area include a place where you can throw a baseball and get your speed rating. I watched a guy around 30 throw one at 57 mph, then really went after his second pitch and got it up to 63. “Not bad,” his buddy said. The first guy grimaced while moving his shoulder around and replied, “That second one really hurt!”

There’s a football toss—try to fling a football into a small opening 15 or 20 yards away. There were two different chipping challenges. One involved flipping plastic golf balls into an opening, another in a big netted area used real balls to hit toward a pin atop a ridge on an artificial putting surface.

A chipping contest area was one of several diversions available for fans :: Gary Van Sickle/Morning Read

Four golf simulators were available in one temporary structure. Something called “The Impossible Putt” required a contestant to putt a ball up a steep slope to the left, past a bale of hay, and try to hole it as it careened down the slope on the other side, where the cup couldn’t be seen from the tee. I guess it was misnamed because I saw one guy make it Friday and another Saturday, the latter on his first try. He won a trinket for the effort.

Two barbers had a pop-up stand where they did hair-styling under a banner that said “Mullets Making a Difference.” I saw at least one customer, a college-age kid with dark hair, who already had a solid base of hair on the back of his neck, getting styled in the barber chair. The cuts were free and for each one, LIV Golf would donate $1,000 to charity.

A handful of assorted different food trucks were parked in the shade near the clubhouse near an area with chairs and tables and even a section of lounge chairs and couches. One thing about watching golf that everyone shares is that at some point after a couple of hours, you just want to sit down and preferably not on the grass. The concession stands sold only drinks or snacks. Parked next to each one on the course was a food truck. Instead of the PGA Tour’s one-vendor-fits-all with the same expensive burgers and dogs, LIV Golf offers customers a variety while supporting local food vendors instead of some national chain.

Sometimes at a golf tournament you just want a comfortable place to sit, and that's not always easy to find. LIV Golf got that right at Rich Harvest Farms :: Gary Van Sickle/Morning Read

Conclusion: The best parts of the fan village were the seating areas. One thing spectators need during a round of golf is someplace to sit down occasionally. There were seats and small tables facing a jumbo video screen in one place. In another, there were lounge chairs and sofas not far from a line of food trucks. The seating and the activities weren’t much but they were a nice touch.

The Team Concept

I’m not losing any sleep over whether the 4 Aces can keep their winning streak going or whether Punch GC or the Fireballs are going to challenge them. Most fans don’t know who’s on which team and don’t care. If they wore team uniforms or team hats, maybe, but still, it takes a little effort to keep up with which team is winning. That is totally different from PGA Tour golf, which has always been about the individual leaderboard.

There is potential for the team portion to grow and improve and become more relevant. Imagine if LIV Golf had no individual portion of the tournament, only a team event, and they played for $50 million and the whole league was run like other major-league sports with franchises, general managers, trades, a draft and so on? In this new golden age of gambling (Phil Mickelson, tell the people what’s wrong with that phrase … ), that would be radically different from the PGA Tour and could appeal to a younger audience.

Conclusion: TBD. LIV’s team golf program is still a work in progress and building franchise recognition will take time and more reps. It’s not there yet.

The Overall Product

LIV Golf reminds me in a positive way of PGA Tour Champions. Fans who attend senior events in person have fun. It’s a good spectator experience. Watching it from home on TV is tougher because, frankly, the senior events don’t have PGA Tour-level meaning. The tour is a series of exhibitions. The golf is excellent but the events are still just exhibitions.

While sponsors and tournament names change over time, the PGA Tour events have tradition and history on their side. Just say “Colonial” and the Wall of Champions and Fort Worth and Ben Hogan come to mind. The Genesis Invitational is the offspring of the old Los Angeles Open. The BMW Championship is the old Western Open. The Honda Classic, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the WM Phoenix Open, the John Deere Classic—those names all mean something to fans.

LIV Golf events are new. They have no history. All they have is money. Is that enough to make it compelling? "No" is an easy answer but before you decide, look for the video clip of Dustin Johnson’s slam-dunked eagle putt to win the Boston event in a playoff a few weeks ago. The crowd went crazy. It was a thrilling and dramatic finish, the kind we’re used to seeing on the PGA Tour.

Conclusion: Do you like to watch golf? LIV offers more golf to watch. It’s that simple.

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