BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Standing over his ball on Friday, Phil Mickelson, the prized acquisition of the brand new, Saudi-backed LIV Golf series, lined up his opening tee shot within the breakaway circuit’s event at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.
Just as Mickelson, who reportedly received an upfront $200 million signing bonus to hitch the insurgent tour, was set to start his swing, a fan 15 yards to his right yelled: “Do it for the Saudi royal family!”
Mickelson backed away from the shot as a security official approached the fan and told him he can be faraway from the grounds if there was one other outburst.
Appearing unnerved, Mickelson returned to his stance and eventually struck the ball, which sailed 60 feet off-line and landed in a cavernous bunker. Stomping off the tee and muttering to his caddie, Mickelson would begin his day with a bogey.
The dominant LIV Golf slogan, barked in radio advertisements and posted on mammoth billboards in neon letters across the Trump course is “Golf, but louder.”
It’s unlikely that the Mickelson episode, which occurred seconds into the primary LIV Golf event held within the Northeast, is what the organizers had in mind.
For many of Friday’s first round it was anything but loud. Yes, there was loads of music played across the grounds, since powerful speakers were situated near greens and tee boxes. But thunderous cheering, the everyday soundtrack of most skilled golf tournaments, was nonexistent.
The crowds on the event, LIV Golf’s third tournament, were too sparse to listen to any ovations wafting across the course. That will have been since it was a Friday slightly than a weekend, but for instance, the biggest first-tee crowd of the day was unquestionably for Mickelson, and it was about 350 people.
And Mickelson was hitting next to a big clubhouse balcony and patio. When he reached his first green, there have been exactly 43 people waiting for him. While he played the 18th hole, a big luxury box overlooking the green was empty. There have been several thousand spectators spaced across the course, but nowhere near the roughly 20,000 that may attend a mean PGA Tour event. LIV Golf officials didn’t announce an attendance figure.
Because the day wore on, certain greens were partially enveloped by fans standing two deep, but that was a rarity. For a lot of attendees, nevertheless, this was not necessarily a foul thing.
Denny McCarthy, 29, of Kearny, N.J., was delighted along with his unobstructed view of the 18th green. He planned to remain in the identical spot for many of the day and watch each of the 18 groups of three players as they played the opening.
“There’s a beer stand behind me and the road’s not long either,” McCarthy said.
There have been other noticeable ways wherein the atmosphere was different than one at a PGA Tour event. For one, the players appeared rather more relaxed. In interviews, LIV Golf players have talked about how the brand new circuit has worked to foster a collective spirit with extravagant pretournament parties at nightclubs and abundant reimbursement of travel expenses for players’ families and caddies.
Furthermore, due to the controversies swirling across the circuit — including its financing by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and the disquiet that it would eternally splinter a revered golf ecosystem — the LIV golfers have felt ostracized. That has bred an us-against-them mentality that was evident on Friday. Because the players walked the fairways, there was rather more casual conversation amongst their groups than is customary at a PGA Tour event.
The team competition element could also be an element. At each LIV event, 12 four-man teams play for a prize of $3 million that the winner splits evenly, supplementing the golfers’ individual earnings.
“It feels very much like playing college golf,” said Sam Horsfield, who, at 25, is one in every of the youngest players in the sphere. “You’re on the market grinding on every shot to attempt to do well for the boys.”
But ultimately, there may be an overriding reason that the LIV golfers may feel more comfortable, and more collaborative: Each player, in a way, is guaranteed to be a winner. Unlike PGA Tour events, which send half the sphere home with out a dollar, LIV Golf events have guaranteed payments. Even the last-place finisher will receive $120,000 for his three days of competition.
Those payouts have been made possible by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which has led critics to accuse the players of selling out to a rustic that’s attempting to paper over its poor human rights record. On Friday, a gaggle of relations of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks protested near the course, asserting that Saudi officials had supported the terrorists.
But on the course, some fans, especially younger ones, fed off the camaraderie that they observed among the many players.
“I like what they’re doing on social media, even seeing them benefit from the social events leading as much as events,” said Jon Monteiro, 30, who traveled from his home in Reading, Pa., to the tournament on Friday. “The players are having more fun, and in the event that they’re having fun I would like to go and share in that atmosphere.”
Standing next to Monteiro was his friend Alex Kelln, 30, who lives in Rumson, N.J. Speaking of past PGA Tour events he had attended, Kelln said the tour had a somewhat unwelcoming stigma, which he described as, “You stand there and there are quiet signs.”
Monteiro interjected: “After we play golf there’s a speaker with music playing, and I feel like that’s how we’ve grown up playing golf.”
Neither Monteiro nor Kelln worry about men’s skilled golf being fractured by the showdown between the tours.
“It’s healthy competition that ultimately will make them each higher,” Kelln said.
As Monteiro and Kelln spoke, it was 90 minutes before the primary shots of the day, before Mickelson’s encounter with a heckler. Before the crowds were thin and scant at many holes.
Monteiro conceded it was early within the LIV Golf experiment. He smiled and said, “We’ll see.”
