But on this day, that couldn’t be further from the truth, as Mickelson crouched near the bottom of the 42-man court at LIV Golf Invitational Boston, a tournament that ended with the Rebel’s first round on Sunday, as Dustin Johnson holed up on a playoff shot. 18ft tall to defeat Joaquin Neiman and Anirban Lahiri for the title.
It’s baffling, yes, because Sunday afternoon on the 18th is the most dramatic stage in golf, and it’s the place you automatically know to head to when the event is over. But in the world of LIV Golf, where tradition is avoided and tricks adopted, where the start of the gun lowers the 18th green on Sunday to nothing different than the other 17, where for spectators, at least those trying to track down golfers who compete not only On a solo title but as members of a team with names like 4 Aces, Iron Heads or Majesticks, it all sounds a bit off.
It’s golf, just messy.
Messy not only in the unfamiliar ways of who’s on which hole and when, team versus single recording, or three days, unlimited competition, the drastic and institutional changes that have inspired LIV founder Greg Norman and his fellow PGA defectors arrive at their actual motto, “Golf, but with a voice higher”.
The top end of this round always comes from dollar signs, from the billions dumped to lure top players like Mickelson and fellow major winners Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and, most recently, British defending champion Cam Smith, money. This is evident not only in the lucrative prize pool for each event, but in the course setting, fan experience, and production value that spares no expense.
But something can look clean on the surface and still be very messy underneath. And from the moment it became clear that LIV would be funded by the financial arm of the government of Saudi Arabia with a history of gross human rights abuses, from the moment it became crystal clear that this amount of money would be limitless in Saudi efforts to achieve by improving its image. All over the world through sport, it has become abundantly clear that golf is headed toward a chaotic future.
We are here.
Here we are, with Mickelson climbing the 18th aisle in black shorts, in response to other LIV changes, except for the wardrobe Norman announced just days earlier, waving to fans keen to admire the puffy calves that Lefty made his Twitter stars their own. . Just a few months ago, Mickelson was going downhill, his US Open appearance in Brooklyn stifled by the news he had defected to LIV, as well as the incredibly insensitive comments he made about working with the Saudis. Although he received applause while playing The Country Club, he also heard harassment. And when, like nearly all LIV golfers on the field this weekend, he struggled to make a cut, to many PGA loyalists, it seemed to anticipate the inevitable downfall of LIV.
But it’s clearly not going away, as evident in recent PGA changes to award structures, a new Elite Championship level, and entry-level base pay as in the expected announcement of a full global schedule in 2023. As evident as the inclusion of a young rising star as Australian Smith, who announced the atmosphere on Sunday, “looks like the track is on a heartbeat.”
Although it is still impossible to find on traditional TV, where there is no contract, and still with a relatively small audience on YouTube streams (about 166,000 views in a three-way playoff that started with Johnson, Lahiri, and Neiman), fans on the site, Although it is much thinner than a major tournament like the US Open, it still shows. With the requisite Red Sox hats on their heads, plenty of Lily Pulitzer dresses on their backs, and drinks in their hands, they couldn’t quite fill the ropes in the aisles (like the announcers tried to say otherwise on the stream), but they did manage to make some noise.
Earn the nickname “golf, but louder” in good faith if you’re anywhere near the opening tee or spend any time in the fan village behind the course entrance. With loud music, with skydivers descending amid yellow smoke in the first lane, with the public speaking announcer encouraging fans to make their best New Year’s Eve impressions and join the official 10-second countdown to start playing, there were times the decibels exceeded anything to be welcomed. At a traditional PGA event.
No doubt this is part of what LIV, the happy cause of a game that they believe needs to be rescued from, boredom (for fans) and miserliness (for players).
Louder, perhaps, in moments. But it’s also messy, and that’s a much bigger concern.
Tara Sullivan is a columnist for The Globe. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter Tweet embed.