Following the April of 2024 LIV event at The Grange, then-LIV CEO Greg Norman was exultant.

 

 

The golf tourism industry agreed, and LIV Adelaide was named World’s Best Golf Event at the World Golf Awards for the second year in a row.

If Norman was happy, the local tourism types were happy clappers in rapture.

“79,000 visitor nights in South Australia," they crowed. "Visitors staying an average of almost four nights,” they brayed. 

“Attendance increased 22 percent on the 2023 event and hotel occupancy in greater metropolitan Adelaide generated an average nightly revenue of $2.8 million and an average occupancy rate of 86 percent," it was proclaimed.

And the fine state of South Australia was shown as “an international sporting destination of choice worldwide; LIV Golf Adelaide 2024 had a broadcast global reach of more than 500 million across 80 territories.”

 

 

Now ... half-a-billion people did not tune in to watch LIV Adelaide. That was the potential audience. The actual one was, well, quite a few fewer. Maybe half-a-billion fewer.

Because while the tournament on the ground is deserving of its gongs, for event operators and project managers of such capacity, it feels passing odd that the television product remains, as the kids would say, a bit meh.

David Feherty will tell you in commentary that if you like golf, you’ll like LIV Golf. And that’s true, after a fashion. And yet there’s something about the TV product that feels … I dunno. Manufactured? 

It's the same for the finely-named Tomorrow's Golf League (TGL) out of SoFi Stadium in Florida. Both are different, the colours and look of it is interesting, and the players are genuinely into it. LIV Golf - as a promising young sports journalist opined in these e-pages on Monday - is like old timey World Series Cricket and Dennis Lillee taking on Viv Richards; but with Cam Smith, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm, genuine world-class golfers. And, smirk not, they do care. They want to win, for they are nowt but competitive animals.

And yet… as it was for “rebel” retro cricketers and modern-day virtual golfers, despite all the money hurled at these people, something about the television show seems to lack, I don’t know… worth?

Now, now, cool your jets, what-about-ists. For I one hundred percent agree there is nothing classic about the RSM Classic, and PGA Tour tournaments sponsored by Zurich, Valero and Charles Schwab, whoever that is, are effectively wallpaper.

Bryson DeChambeau entertains Adelaide in 2024. PHOTO: Getty Images

Most PGA Tour events are templates of the last one. They’re more same-same than the Olsen twins.

There's so much of it, that sometimes golf on TV is like watching rich people in long pants rooting around.

LIV’s television coverage of tournies in Mayakoba, Tulsa, King Abdullah Economic City, wherever, like these generic PGA Tour events is, generally, not that compelling that often.

Three rounds of individual strokeplay without a cut. What's there to lose? They've all been paid; it's just how much.

That said, to poorly paraphrase Feherty, if you’re on the couch and you find LIV Adelaide, Hong Kong or Singapore (the three tournaments in our time zone) while flicking through the channels, you’ll peel the top off a tinnie and take it all in, and have a relatively pleasant time, even if you’re hating on it.

But the cheer-leading of the commentary team and the relentlessly upbeat declarations by the on-the-ground talent is that, as in The Lego Movie, everything is awesome. And everything is not awesome because everything cannot be awesome, lest things that are awesome - the exploding volcano of Krakato, drinking beer while watching the Boxing Day Test match, Jessica Alba - lose their lustre by comparison.

And it can stick in a sport-man’s craw. 

In a similar, Old Man Shouting At Cloud vein, once upon a time – and it doesn’t seem that long ago – you watched sport by turning on the television. Now you’ve got to scan a QR code, remember a password, and root around to see if you’ve installed an app on your phone. For something that's available everywhere - apps, YouTube, very smart TVs where Channel Seven’s digital offerings are called Mate and Plus and Kevin, possibly - it takes some tuning in.

And then once you've scanned the app and you're in, it’s not as much fun to watch while flicking through channels from the cricket to race three in Randwick to LIV in Hong Kong.

That said, Fox Sports in America showed the Saudi LIV tourney. Here's hoping there's one remote to rule them all. Make it happen here, Ruprecht.

LIV Golf is tricky to broadcast for a couple of reasons. Shot-gun starts mean everything’s happening everywhere all at once. "Blink and you'll miss it" maybe shouldn't be a tagline.   

And, while we're picking at it like a hungry murder of crows, LIV has two tournaments running simultaneously – the teams event and the individual. There are multiple stories to be told and you can’t tell them properly all at once. Pop quiz: who won the LIV Adelaide individual title last year? And did you know without a Google it was Brendan Steele?

And there’s another issue: Brendan Steele. The man’s more anonymous than Ryggs Johnston. Among the LIV playing group, he’s not Pat Malone. For every Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, there’s a Richard Bland, an Andy Ogletree, a Zimbabwean Vincent brother who looks like a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

Top of that, several of LIV’s “name” players, the ones who go by one name – Bubba, Poults, Westy, Phil - are so far over the hill they’re doing ACLs going down the other side. The slightly less far gone 40-somethings – Sergio, Henrik, G-Mac McDowell – have many more yesterdays than tomorrows. And even the thirty-somethings with some sap in them - Martin Kaymer, Branden Grace – have been going like bigger busteds than the flightless Australian bustard.

And new blood’s coming in thin. And thus, even now, three seasons old, LIV Golf can’t claim it’s a meritocracy when Kaymer, captain of the Cleeks, is contractually allowed to stay in the league despite not finishing better than 40th in three iterations.

Meanwhile, there’s one (1) new chum blooded at the annual LIV Golf Promotions, with this year’s Wonka Golden Ticket won by “Max” Lee Chieh-Po of Chinese Taipei. He'd barely be famous in his own family.

Top of all that, and as entertaining as it might be to see him splat the golf ball about, one-time wild child Anthony Kim – who said, in an interview with Feherty on LIV TV, that he once lived with six dogs and two monkeys - has been roped in as roaming “wildcard” after last playing on the PGA Tour in 2012.

 

 

Now, all this stuff can be sorted, of course. As John Connor (Edward Furlong) said in Terminator II, the future is unset. And there should 100 percent be a place for LIV Golf on the television and what Norman calls the golfing “ecosystem”. Long live LIV. And long live the TGL, too, even if I think it's like watching rich people play simulator golf, the kids love computers.

And if the Great Powers ever allow the free flow of individual contractors between the Saudi-funded established tours and the Saudi-funded startups, and it’s all broadcast by Fox or CBS or another of the titans, there will go the neighbourhood.

And yet … none of all that happy horse-clap will matter a pinch of Glenelg tram sand on Friday at The Grange when it’ll be fine and fun, and the fans will be excited by world class golf, thumping bass beats, and massive amounts of responsibly served alcohol.

And here we are.