He Went There

No matter where you stand on LIV Golf, it’s a near certainty that you’ve never seen it in person.

The series only contested eight events this year, and three of those were outside the US. While LIV doesn’t announce attendance figures, it’s been observed that galleries are sparse. The fact is, the overwhelming majority of LIV’s harshest critics have never actually witnessed the product firsthand — and the same can be said for the series’ staunchest supporters. 

I decided to go take a look.

This weekend’s LIV Golf Miami Team Championship marked the end of LIV’s 2022 calendar, and it was a four-hour drive from my home in Orlando. As covered here previously, I am an independent contractor now, and this trip was solely on my own dime and for my own purposes. As such, I was a little curious as to whether or not LIV would grant me a press pass. At their media portal, I applied as a columnist for whitwatson.com. One week before the tournament began, I received a confirmation email. Big step for my budding media empire.

Made the drive south to Doral on a Thursday. Should note that the word “Doral” is used interchangeably in South Florida to mean the City of Doral as well as the golf resort. Took me a few tries to locate the off-site media parking lot — the address supplied by LIV’s media officials didn’t quite match the lot’s actual location. From there, It was a short shuttle ride to the gates of Doral, the resort. 

The resort — officially known as Trump National Doral Miami — is aging, but well maintained. My last visit there was before 2016, when the PGA Tour vacated Miami, and the property remains ideally suited to host a golf event. Rooms are plentiful, and everything is steps away from the golf course. Resort staffers were attentive (and plentiful as well). Player dining, locker rooms, the media center — all clearly marked and close by. The lobby was buzzing with a mix of players, wives, girlfriends, agents, caddies, managers, and aging volunteers. In short, it looked and felt like a professional golf tournament.

As was the case all year for LIV, the event started Friday, but the format changed for the “Team Championship” finale. The top four teams in the season-long standings had a bye into the second round on Saturday. Higher ranked teams outside the top 4 got to choose their opponents via a Thursday “draft,” a press conference chucklefest that got some play on social media. Friday’s team competition consisted of two singles matches and one foursomes match per match-up; your team had to win 2 out of 3 to advance.

The same format was used on Saturday, with the top four teams now thrown into the mix after their first-round byes (and after another “draft” on Friday). The final round would switch to stroke play for the four remaining teams, for a total of 16 players on the course on Sunday. I should note that the LIV media center at Doral, which rivaled anything on the PGA Tour outside of major championships, had plenty of documentation to explain the schedule.

The format was confusing on paper, but it wasn’t a big deal in person. LIV planted plenty of scoreboards and video screens on the golf course, and the match-play format over the first two days made it relatively easy to follow. In truth, it was harder to understand the draft process than it was the golf. My understanding is that the format for the Team Championship wasn’t finalized until the last minute, so consider this entire weekend a placeholder.

Before we get to the atmosphere on the course, a sidebar into the broadcast.

For a non-major, non-elevated, regular season event on the PGA Tour, there might be 8 to 12 cameras on the golf course. If a network were really trying to cut costs, a tournament could be produced with as few as five cameras. LIV uses nearly seventy.

That number includes two drones and a camera that flies on wires over the pond between 9 and 18. There are fixed cameras on every tee and every green, which is a necessity in a shotgun start. Producer Keith Hirshland has three replay producers who are advising him about which shots are on tape. With the 70 cameras added to the various tape and graphic machines, Hirshland and director Steve Beim are staring at over 100 screens on the monitor wall inside the truck. That’s 100 different sources to keep track of during a live broadcast. It was the first time I had ever seen those screens labeled with three-digit numbers.

The first and second round of PGA Tour events start early in the morning, usually with players teeing off on the first and 10th tee. That’s necessary when you have 120+ players in the field. LIV’s model sends less than 50 players off at the same time in a 12:15pm shotgun start on multiple holes, which means everything happens at once. It’s camera gymnastics for the broadcast crew. Obviously, not every shot can be shown live. Hence the number of cameras and the number of shots recorded on tape for playback. From a competitive standpoint, the absence of a “morning wave” or “afternoon wave” means that every player is seeing the course under identical conditions, something that never occurred to me until I saw it live.

Back outside: there’s an MC announcing the countdown to the shotgun start, trying to whip up the crowd. LIV CEO Greg Norman was on the first tee to see Brooks Koepka start his match against Harold Varner III, and the tee box is surrounded by fans sitting on elevated platforms. While LIV doesn’t yet have the corporate hospitality infrastructure typically found at PGA Tour events, there are multiple “club” structures around the course, all with an air of exclusivity. Many of the signs for these private areas included a QR code that patrons could scan if they wanted to pay up on their ticket and gain instant, improved access. This may not be new, but it was new to me, and I thought it to be pretty clever.

There is indeed music being played during competition, and it’s not just at the clubhouse or on the range — there are speakers planted all around the course. There’s a DJ who handles the mix, which is sort of a mellow house party. It wasn’t bothersome. You get used to it. I never saw a player complain or back off a shot. No doubt they are used to it by now, as well.

What I did see: crowds. Phil Mickelson’s gallery on Friday at the 9th hole could have been Phil’s gallery anywhere. It’s a safe bet that this event garnered LIV’s largest attendance of the year, by a wide margin. It’s just the kind of event for which Miami shows out. The gallery skewed younger and better-dressed than what you find at a typical PGA Tour event. Star players like Mickelson and Koepka drew proportionately larger throngs of people. The hospitality clubs weren’t full, but they weren’t empty, either. The bar areas were getting a workout. There were a lot of people out there, and it was only Friday.

I had plans at home on Saturday night, so I wasn’t there to see the final round on Sunday. I watched the final moments online, and the crowd was indeed larger than what I saw Friday. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that the Dolphins were on the road.

The 4 Aces team, led by captain Dustin Johnson, won the championship with a four-player total of seven under par. Together they shared a $16 million first place prize, $4 million to each member of the team. By comparison, Scott Stallings needed 31 starts on the PGA Tour last season to make $3.9 million.

One of LIV’s marketing lines is “Golf, But Louder.” In my eyes, it was Golf, But Different. On the ground, the LIV event bore a resemblance to any other professional tour event, with slight quirks that grab your attention, then fade — like the music, for example. The fans were into it. Nobody seemed bothered by the match play - stroke play format or the shotgun start. Much like the players themselves, the fans adapted quickly.

It was immediately apparent that the continuing salvos between LIV and the golf establishment had little to no impact on the fan experience. The so-called “war” for the soul of the professional game is being waged in the golf world bubble, which is smaller than you think. That’s not to say that the arguments on either side are inconsequential; the source of LIV’s funding will always be problematic, and the need for a shakeup in the golf establishment remains. It’s just that the topic had little effect on the presentation of the event. Sometimes I think we in golf media assume that the average fan is consuming information at the same rate we do; evidence suggests otherwise.

Speaking to the media in Miami earlier in the week, LIV Golf president and COO Atul Khosla made references to a “startup” and “disrupt(ing) a space,” likening LIV to the early days of Amazon or Uber. It’s far too early to project that level of success for LIV, but Khosla has a point when he talks about the “tenacity” required to “work through the first couple of years.” There was a palpable sense of novelty on the ground in Miami. Much like the format of the Team Championship itself, everything about LIV is essentially a placeholder, subject to examination and refinement. For example, while LIV is deeply committed to the team concept, they know that the current team names invite derision. 2022 was a beta test for LIV, and I’d expect it to look quite different in 2023.

Whether watching in person or on a streaming broadcast, it’s not hard to spot LIV’s challenges. A broadcast agreement is essential. Corporate partnerships are a priority, as difficult as that will be. LIV players are rightfully concerned about World Ranking points and eligibility for major championships and the Ryder Cup. Litigation has already begun. Regardless of funding, the series faces an uphill climb.

You wouldn’t know any of that at Doral. The weather was perfect, the drinks were flowing, there were star players on the course, and it was a weekend of golf in Miami. Golf, but different.