Enormous crowds flocked to the Adelaide Sandbelt, headline music acts – and more drinks – kept them on site well after the conclusion of play and the golfers bought into the party atmosphere.

The replica of the WM Phoenix Open party hole even got a Sunday hole-in-one from Chase Koepka and a few beer, champagne, and whatever else the crowd could get their hands on, showers.

Despite all this, the observation of some on the ground this week, and indeed this reporter, was that while LIV Golf and its players might insist the circuit is not an exhibition, it has all the hallmarks. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

An exhibition is of course “a public showing (as of works of art, objects of manufacture, or athletic skill)”, and LIV Golf is certainly a public showing of the phenomenal skills of its players. In front of a mix of established and different demographics of fans.

The players themselves are of course competitive, these are professional athletes who would want to beat each other for $4 let alone $4 million. And some don’t believe the exhibition tag fits.

“I wouldn't say it's exhibition,” Marc Leishman said. “Yes, it's different, but I mean, there's room for more than one golf Tour around the world. There's many golf Tours around the world … Certainly exhibition, yeah, that's not the case. Everyone is playing so hard out there.

Lee Westwood isn't sure of whether LIV should be considered an exhibition but says the play means as much as other events. PHOTO:Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images.

“But different is good sometimes; you look at one-day cricket when that started and Twenty20 when that started. There's different formats of a game, and this is a different format, but at the end of the day, it's still golf, it's just a shorter form.

“It's exciting. I think the music and all that, it brings non-golfers to the golf course or to a golf tournament, which I feel like Twenty/20 cricket did, the short format, don't have to be there for 12 hours.”

Leishman, who compared the atmosphere of the Adelaide crowds to contending in a major, was backed up on the cricket and crowd front by Lee Westwood. The Englishman unsure on the exhibition concept, and exactly what constitutes one.

“It still means as much. I honestly don’t know what exhibition means to be perfectly honest. Sport is entertainment, we are entertainers and people are entertained watching this,” Westwood told Golf Australia magazine.

“It’s an option for people. Like in cricket, you’ve got five day, but would I go and watch five day all the time or would I watch a little bit of five day and a little bit of Twenty/20, I would go that way.”

Again, that the players want to beat one another is no surprise, yet a variety of the goings on in Adelaide from LIV Golf as an organisation, and by players arguing the seriousness of the competition, makes it difficult to take the non-exhibition argument completely at face value.

Due to the shotgun start, LIV Golf League closes the range about 25 minutes prior to the tee times, making one question just how “warm” players still are from their warm-up.

In fact, tee times this past week bring about another point in favour of the exhibition argument.

Shirtless American comedians and shoeys don't scream non-exhibition golf. PHOTO: Mark Brake/Getty Images.

The team element of LIV Golf is an intriguing one that has potential to be a driving force for popularity growth globally.

However, sending three members of each team out to play together in the first round, does the very opposite of creating an impression of high level competitive play.

That is not to question the scruples of any of the field when it comes to the rules. Though these are purportedly tight knit groups of friends and three golfers with a common goal of winning the team title and boosting their group’s value. From a purely optics standpoint in relation to competition, it doesn’t pass the pub test.

While on the team front, yes it has legs as a point of interest, but the ‘Great Goats Grange Collapse’ is well off being ‘The Miracle at Medinah’ no matter how much hyperbole the television commentators threw at us.

The coverage again is geared towards the fun, and why not, yet the dubbed sound of a ball going in a hole for each putt and a shot tracer that was about as accurate as Sihwan Kim this week don’t scream seriousness.

Nor do the antics of some players during the week, including Bryson DeChambeau willingly grabbing the phone of a member of the crowd during Saturday’s round to take a group selfie. Then, less than an hour after telling this publication he was “grinding”, he was hitting balls left-handed, performing party tricks and, eventually, downing a shoey.

Will we see the man who famously was so tortured by his game at an Open Championship on the range throw his club in near darkness do the same at Royal Liverpool in July? One has to think his shoes will be exclusively for walking that week.

RIGHT: Aussie Marc Leishman is firmly in the camp that LIV Golf is an alternative to other Tours, and not an exhibtiion. PHOTO: LIV Golf.

Shoe and shoeys were the theme of the week, with Aussie DJ Fisher given free rein to roam the par-3 12th party hole and drink from footwear on Friday before his set in the fan village that night.

Approaching Smith with a shoe filled with his own ‘Hard Fizz’ alcoholic seltzer, the DJ was waved away. That wasn’t the case that night on stage when Smith gave in and downed the drink.

Entertaining? Absolutely. Great for broader coverage of golf and Australia? You betcha. Serious tournament vibes considering it was after the first round? Not so much.

(As an aside, if LIV Golf aren’t selling ‘Ripper GC’ branded shoes for drinking from in the merchandise tent next year, they have missed a trick.)

Fisher wasn’t the only non-golf name to grace the tournament with their presence this week. There were current and past footballers, cricketers, and American comedian Bert Kreischer, who helped celebrate Koepka’s hole-in-one on Sunday by whipping his shirt off and waving it around his head.

For those unaware, the funny man regularly does his stand-up routine shirtless.

He was again bare chested when hitting a tee shot on the 12th hole before play on Sunday. Again, entertaining and attention grabbing, but if LIV Golf are trying to legitimise the golf aspect, it isn’t exactly helping.

This question of exhibition or not won’t be solved for everyone as long as LIV Golf is in existence, and particularly while the ongoing battle lines are drawn with the established Tours of the golfing world.

One has to wonder if that is how we ended up with this question in the first place.

"Apparently along the way the word ‘exhibition’ came to be considered dirtier than the shoes everyone was drinking from in Adelaide … at least to some." - Jimmy Emanuel.

The LIV Golf model is seemingly built for exhibiting the game of golf and offering it to potentially new audiences.

The teams, the shorter format, the shotgun start, crossover celebrities and the more relaxed atmosphere and players are a great way to showcase golf.

In an ideal world for Greg Norman and LIV Golf, it surely would have been just that and their crew of handsomely paid players would then head back to the majors and their chosen PGA Tour events each year for some more traditional stuff that might garner some additional attention thanks to what might have been an exhibition series.

But with the bans that are in place and schism showing no signs of settling, the players need a more competitive focus on LIV Golf to one, keep their games sharp, and two, hopefully attract world ranking points at some stage.

Professional golfers will always want to compete with one another, but LIV Golf will have realised the entertainment factor this week was a major part in its success. That, alongside the unquestionable thirst for big name golfers in Australia.

Although, big names like Brooks Koepka being in Adelaide from Sunday but seeing the course for the first time Wednesday, and Dustin Johnson reportedly only arriving at the recent Orlando event on pro-am day don’t scream early preparation.

At this point between the players’ wants, needs and definitions, and the still evolving concept as to what LIV Golf is and will become, the league is something akin to being half pregnant.

Players and LIV officials might not like that ‘E’ word, but Adelaide was a pretty damn fine exhibition of golf.

Remember, The Masters started as an invitational to show off (read exhibit) what Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts had created at Augusta.

And Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer playing each other or local pros in exhibitions, forms part of the fabric of Australian, and indeed global, golf.

However, apparently along the way the word ‘exhibition’ came to be considered dirtier than the shoes everyone was drinking from in Adelaide … at least to some.

And a difference of opinion is just fine too.