BEDMINSTER, NJ — Phil Mickelson, the esteemed addition to the new Saudi-backed LIV Golf series, bent over his ball in the breakaway circuit at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster on Friday.
Just as Mickelson, who had reportedly received a $200 million signing bonus to join the insurgent tour, was about to kick off his swing, a fan 50 feet to his right yelled, “Do it for the Saudi royal family!”
Mickelson flinched from the shot as a security officer approached the ventilator and told him he would be removed from the site if there were another eruption.
Mickelson looked nervous, returned to his stance and finally hit the ball, which sailed 60 feet off-line and landed in a cavernous bunker. Mickelson stomped off the tee, muttering to his caddy, and started his day with a bogey.
The dominant LIV Golf slogan, barked in radio ads and posted on giant neon billboards around the Trump track, is “Golf, but louder”.
It’s unlikely that the Mickelson episode, which happened seconds after the first LIV Golf event in the Northeast, is what the organizers had in mind.
It was anything but loud for most of Friday’s first round. Yes, a lot of music was played on site, from powerful speakers at greens and tee boxes. But there was no thunderous cheer, the typical soundtrack of most professional golf tournaments.
The crowd at the event, LIV Golf’s third tournament, was too sparse to hear ovations across the course. That may be because it was a Friday rather than a weekend, but as an example, the biggest crowd on the first tee of the day was undoubtedly for Mickelson, and it was about 350 people.
And Mickelson was hitting next to a large clubhouse balcony and patio. When he reached his first green, exactly 43 people were waiting for him. While he was playing the 18th hole, a large luxury box overlooking the green was empty. Several thousand spectators were scattered around the track, but nowhere near the 20,000 or so who could attend an average PGA Tour event. LIV Golf officials did not disclose attendance figures.
As the day progressed, certain greens were partially enveloped by fans standing two deep, but that was a rarity. For many attendees, however, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Denny McCarthy, 29, of Kearny, NJ, was delighted with his unobstructed view of the 18th green. He planned to stay in the same spot for most of the day and watch each of the 18 groups of three players as they played the hole.
“There’s a beer stall behind me and the line isn’t long either,” McCarthy said.
There were other notable ways the atmosphere was different from a PGA Tour event. First, the players seemed much more relaxed. In interviews, LIV Golf players have shared how the new circuit has worked to foster a collective spirit with extravagant pre-tournament parties at nightclubs and lavish travel reimbursement for families and players’ caddies.
In addition, due to the controversies swirling around the circuit — including funding from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and the worry that it will forever shatter a respected golf ecosystem — LIV golfers feel ostracized. That has led to an us-versus-them mentality that became apparent on Friday. As the players walked the fairways, there was much more casual conversation between their groups than is usual at a PGA Tour event.
The team competition element can be a factor. At each LIV event, 12 four-man teams compete for a $3 million prize that the winner splits evenly, in addition to the golfers’ individual earnings.
“It’s a lot like playing college golf,” said Sam Horsfield, who at 25 is one of the youngest players in the field. “You’re out there grinding on every shot trying to get it right for the guys.”
But in the end, there’s one overriding reason that LIV golfers feel more comfortable and collaborate more: in a way, every player is guaranteed to be a winner. Unlike PGA Tour events, which send home half the field without a dollar, LIV Golf events have guaranteed payments. Even the last to finish in last place 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 country trying to document its poor human rights record. On Friday, a group of relatives of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks protested near the coursealleging that Saudi officials had supported the terrorists.
But on the track, some fans, especially younger ones, fed on the camaraderie they saw among the players.
“I like what they do on social media, even when I see them enjoying the social events that precede events,” said Jon Monteiro, 30, who traveled to the tournament from his home in Reading, Pennsylvania on Friday. “The players have more fun and when they have fun, I want to share in that atmosphere.”
Next to Monteiro was his friend Alex Kelln, 30, who lives in Rumson, NJ. Speaking about previous PGA Tour events he’d attended, Kelln said the tour had a slightly unwelcome stigma, which he described as, “You’re standing there and there are silent signs.”
Monteiro interrupted: “When we play golf, there’s a speaker with music, and I feel like that’s how we grew up playing golf.”
Neither Monteiro nor Kelln are concerned that the men’s professional golf will be broken by the showdown between the tours.
“It’s healthy competition that will eventually make them both better,” Kelln said.
As Monteiro and Kelln spoke, it was 90 minutes before the first shots of the day, before Mickelson’s encounter with a heckler. The crowd used to be thin and sparse at many holes.
Monteiro admitted it was early in the LIV Golf experiment. He smiled and said, “We’ll see.”