ROCESTER, ENGLAND | It was not only the opening of the Paris Olympic Games, which suffered from transport disruption last Friday.
LIV Golf’s latest venture to England, two years after the tour’s debut event near London, already had been a little vague with regards to geography. The host venue – the JCB Golf & Country Club – is in the village of Rocester, close to the town of Uttoxeter, and between the cities of Stoke-on-Trent and Derby. None of them cut much C-suite mustard, so LIV UK was the official tournament title, and the lack of directional detail was also evident as 14,000 fans descended on the course on the morning of the first round.
In stark contrast to the roads around other tournaments, the tiny lanes that surround the JCB G&CC had almost no signs pointing anyone toward car parks (and therefore avoiding bottlenecks). At Troon during the Open earlier this month, for example, these missives, as they need to be, started to direct traffic from a significant distance from the course. Around Rocester, there was gridlock.
Fans abandoned cars and walked as much as five miles to the venue. Holders of non-public parking passes became stuck in a blockage that didn’t move for more than 40 minutes at one point. An elderly local woman was in tears, unable to exit her driveway because roads that had been advertised as closed to golf traffic were in reality choked by it. Guests of a nearby glamping site were trapped in lay-bys wondering when their holiday might ever begin. Fans climbed verges and crept through coppices hoping to enter the site by stealth rather than complete lengthy journeys to the entrance. With the tiny roads lined by high hedges, it felt a little like being trapped in maze.
“A joke”; “madness”; “has anyone seen a sign?”; “does anyone know where we are?”; and “shall we just go home?” were a few of many cries of those stuck in queues or resigned to hiking to the course. “Oh, God,” sighed one traffic marshal, “we’ve got another two days of this.”
The fans were not alone. Players also were snagged in the queues, prompting a short delay to the shotgun start. When one fan heard of this news, his immediate response was to suggest pointing the shotgun at the backside of whoever was in charge of traffic control.
What is perhaps most surprising about this lunchtime chaos is that it was such a striking contrast with what was on offer once tickets finally had been presented. “Hell to get here,” said one biblically-inspired punter, “heaven within.”
Augusta National might beg to differ. It does, after all, hold the copyright for divine contrast on either side of a golfing boundary.
It’s also true that there was more than one distinction on show last week, and the second was perhaps more telling: the difference between that first LIV event at the Centurion Club in June 2022 and last week’s edition.
Of course, that inaugural week of competition was fraught with a kind of static electricity. As the first shotgun signalled the end of the phoney war and the start of the on-the-course action, news of PGA Tour sanctions landed. Greg Norman prowled the site in aviator sunglasses. LIV staff combined the thrill of being part of something bold and new with an awareness that the world was watching, and a hyper-awareness that many viewers were very critical.
At the JCB G&CC, it was immediately apparent that the staff was both greater in number and more comfortable in their own skins. The infrastructure was also more significant and impressive. It was also focussed rather than hopeful. The galleries, meanwhile, knew who and what they were watching.
The merchandise store felt a little like the entire enterprise in microcosm. In 2022 it was treated like something of a curiosity. Fans wandered around resembling tentative tourists in a far-off land, picking up trinkets, fingering them doubtfully, not really knowing what to do with them or what they represented. Last week fans knew exactly which team shirt, hoodie or cap they wanted, and business was brisk.
Insiders are happy two years on. They were zealous then and feel vindicated now.
They believe that the traditional golf world was, and remains, complacent. Television viewing figures for the sport are poor, and a significant proportion of what exists is middle-aged to elderly. Being blunt about it, the clock is ticking.
Television executives know the watching demographic is diminishing and with it their enthusiasm to buy rights to a sport that is more expensive to broadcast than, for example, darts (which gets significantly bigger TV audiences in the U.K.). You don’t have to be a genius to put two and two together.
Those insiders believe that while traditionalists have turned up their noses at the shotgun start, it has delivered for TV in three ways: 4½ hours action rather than upwards of 10; a higher concentration of shots by the stars and the contenders; a time slot that can be trusted and sold.
They contend that this package can help the sport capture the attention of a public with an ever-shortening attention span. They also are convinced that the team dynamic is building a head of steam and that those teams’ future value and worth will repay the investment by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
What remains from two years ago is what might be called the Saudi disconnect. Because while some consider PIF involvement distasteful, LIV insiders and last week’s paying punters consider it a trifle. Questions of it are answered with everything from shrugs of indifference to grimaces of awkwardness via frowns of frustration and narrowed eyes of suspicion.
Back in 2022 there was much talk, both at the launch press conference in May and the first event in June, of LIV utilising a “startup mentality.” On the one hand, it was a little bit rich, making out as if they were a handful of hipsters with another coffee-roasting idea. On the other, it had very clearly created a staff-wide mind-set that would enable them to negotiate the many bumps in the road ahead.
Cars on the roads, lots of them, proved a lot trickier to deal with than bumps in them, but LIV Golf rumbles on. Progress has been made, and the venture’s foot soldiers are more confident than ever.
At the start of the afternoon, I wondered where I’d be in two years’ time (still stuck in traffic seemed entirely feasible). By the end of it, I wondered where LIV would be.
E-MAIL MATT
Top: LIV Golf has been intentional about getting fans and players up close and personal.
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