Will LIV Golf attract 15K fans for team championship in Detroit? Organizers hope so
'I've played enough in the States, I guess, to know that I guess the further north you go, the rowdier the fans get, I think, is about right,' said Smith, the Australian captain of the Ripper GC team. 'So, expecting a pretty rowdy week, you know, with the concerts and everything. Hopefully, we get some big crowds and it should be a fun week.'
During a virtual news conference Wednesday, July 30, Smith was joined by Louis Oosthuizen, the South African captain of Stinger GC, to preview the season-ending LIV Golf Team Championship Michigan, which will be played Aug. 22-24 at The Cardinal at St. John's in Plymouth.
Twelve four-player teams will kick off the action the first day. Each match will consist of two singles matches and one alternate-shot foursome match, with three total points up for grabs. The tournament will be run in a bracket-style format with quarterfinals scheduled the first day, semifinals the second day and the final on the third day.
The Ryder Cup-style event is yet another difference between the upstart LIV Golf tour, now in its fourth season, and the established PGA Tour. LIV promotes itself as a livelier and more relaxed experience with players allowed to wear shorts and music playing around the course during each round.
The deep pockets of Saudi Arabia's Investment Fund, which primarily bankrolls the tour, has spent considerable money to lure former PGA Tour stars and major winners like Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson. Those five players alone reportedly received contracts that totaled nearly $1 billion.
The star power plus the carnival-like atmosphere that will feature live performances by "Imagine Dragons" after Saturday's round and by house group "Swedish House Mafia" on Sunday could help attract the 10,000-15,000 fans organizers are expecting.
'It feels like you had a festival,' Oosthuizen said of LIV events. 'It feels like … there's a concert. Some have more than one concert and music. You'll see a lot of younger people. They're enjoying (the tournament) outside of golf, not just the golf.
'And, you know, that's the biggest thing to attract people that (don't) really know anything, a lot, about golf, and getting them to see the top players play the game, and then also enjoy family time with the fan zone and everything else we do outside of just golf. So it is different. It's a different experience.'
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.
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