Plymouth — The LIV Golf League is infamous, depending on who you ask. When the league launched and signed several big name players away from the PGA Tour, golf fans were either amused or incensed.
Two years later, LIV has a cult following. The LIV Team Championship in Plymouth showed why: Their live events are a weekend of total entertainment.
LIV throws a hell of a party. It’s all very well produced. From the graphics, to the branding, to the atmosphere, there wasn’t a better place in Southeast Michigan to drink outdoors this weekend.
I arrived at the course in the middle of the afternoon Saturday, making my way past the police blockades by flashing my media credentials and LIV-sanctioned parking pass. Crowds everywhere were making their way to the entrance, more arriving on shuttles every minute.
I checked in at the media center in the club house, an ornate former Catholic seminary now known as The Cardinal at St. John’s. If there’s golf in heaven, the club houses look like this. Ornate woodwork and detailing, chandeliers and high ceilings. The seminarians left their mark.
Full disclosure—LIV Golf gave me a free hot dog. And a sandwich the next day. Possibly even a slice of apple pie, all eaten within the stately media dining ballroom. So before you accuse me of being bought and paid for, know that yes, I was, and all it took was a coney.
I bring this up because, for whatever reason, the existence of LIV Golf still infuriates some people. One Michigan golf influencer, who I won’t bother to name, posted a series of stories on Instagram about how he would never “sell his soul to LIV” and attend the Team Championship event for any amount of money, implying that any media who did so were paid off.
All jokes (and hot dogs) aside, I was not paid to cover this event by anyone other than Michigan Enjoyer. LIV graciously granted me media access, with no editorial guidelines or requests whatsoever.
I headed out to the course, looking for the man of the hour—Bryson DeChambeau.
Bryson is LIV’s biggest star player, captain of the Crushers, his team in the LIV Golf League. Two-time U.S. Open Champion, a huge power hitter off the tee, with a reputation for eccentricity. Did you know all his clubs are the same length? Yes, everyone knows by now.
The thing is, Bryson isn’t a star just because of his golf game. He’s a YouTuber now, and a very successful one. He’s unlocked a different level of celebrity than the rest of professional golf by becoming an internet personality.
He posts longform YouTube videos in a few different formats, trying to break 50 in a scramble format with guests, trying to break course records in one try. His videos with other popular YouTube golfers, like the Good Good guys and Grant Horvat, have tens of millions of views.
He quickly blew up on Instagram too with his daily series trying to hit a hole-in-one over his house. He finally did it after a week or so, managing not to break his massive glass windows, and put the ball in the hole.
Yes, he’s a tremendous golfer, and one hell of a ball striker off the tee. But Bryson’s fandom is bigger than that. Grown men yelled, “I love you Bryson!” across the course. Kids waited for him at the end of each hole begging for a high-five.
To his credit, I didn’t see a single high-five refused. He knows he’s the star here, and his fans are key to that.
Bryson, Bryson, where is Bryson? The crowds followed him around the course, everyone calling him by his first name.
I caught up with him making the turn, but the crowds were so tight, getting the right camera angle was impossible. The course was packed, even with gray Saturday skies. Something like 15,000 people attended each day, with thousands looking for Bryson at any given moment.
A quick lesson in attending professional golf events: Scout out the course, and position yourself a few holes ahead of the group you’d like to see.
I managed a prime position near the fourth tee box, mere feet from the players as they teed off. Bryson drilled one down the fairway, finishing up with a birdie to win his match that day.
The stage was set. Both for the championship matchup on Sunday, and for a series of post-golf concerts.
LIV events are hedonistic commitments to entertainment. Stadium seating with bars and lounges scattered the course. Booze was sold everywhere, and there were food trucks of every kind, even playgrounds and spaces just for kids.
Giant screens were visible everywhere. Music played from speakers constantly, even near the greens. Lo-fi hip hop and electronic beats, no vocals.
The concerts: Imagine Dragons on Saturday and Swedish House Mafia on Sunday. Peak millennial core, surely meant to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. A necessary evil, as the age demographics were wildly diverse for a live event at this scale.
This wasn’t your usual old man golf crowd. In fact, far from it. The crowd skewed fairly young, but everyone was in attendance—boomers; zoomers and zoomettes; millennial bros and their pregnant wives; even a surprising number of dogs.
There were many attractive young women in attendance, I might add. Not surprising, as golf has grown enormously in popularity among young women the last few years. Ditch the dating apps and hit the links, fellas.
The line at the on-course merch shop was out the door. Everyone seemed to have a plastic bag carrying apparel they’d bought. Crushers hats were everywhere. Fathers and sons wore matching ones.
LIV has surprisingly strong, and growing, brand affinity in the Midwest. I heard some LIV staff guys discussing it in the media ballroom, wondering why they do well here.
I’ll hazard a guess: because LIV hosts crazy opulent events like this, here, in Michigan. They brought Bryson, arguably the most popular golfer in America, to play for a Michigan crowd. This is the only time Michigan golf fans have gotten to see truly elite players tee it up in the Mitten in years.
The Rocket Classic, the only PGA Tour event in the state, isn’t nearly as extravagant as a LIV event. The Tour’s elite players, like Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, skipped it this year. For the PGA, the Midwest isn’t a place to host premiere events.
Midwesterners have also grown more rebellious as of late, especially the sort of Trump-supporting golf fans you might expect to attend a professional golf event.
They don’t trust societal institutions, and the PGA Tour is no exception. LIV is new and perceived as the flashy underdog, compared to the stodginess of professional golf.
This appeals heavily to the current midwestern mindset, to the Michigander mindset. The old institutions failed them, so they’re down to try something new.
Sunday was sunnier, and just as packed. Bryson’s crowd was even larger, as he headlined the Championship match in a group with his friend, and biggest LIV rival, the Spaniard Jon Rahm, captain of LIV’s Legion XIII.
Rahm won the individual points championship on LIV this season, but this event was unique for professional golf. A team championship format with brackets. These were the playoffs, for lack of a better word, all culminating on the final day. It was closer to the Ryder Cup than a standard tour event.
LIV is committed to the concept of team golf. Golfers belong to a team of four, with the teams competing in different formats throughout the year, and the team championship here. The teams all have their own names, logos, uniforms, the whole nine yards.
It’s unique, yet there’s a tension between the team concept and the individual celebrity of certain players. You get the sense that LIV wants to be a product in its own right, to grow brand affinity for the teams, and not be so reliant on Bryson or Rahm to carry the crowd.
In a boardroom somewhere, executives are pondering how to do exactly that. There’s a tremendous amount of staff behind the league, by the way. You see them coming and going behind the scenes. It’s a tremendous program for designers, videographers, producers. They’re all professional yet cool, alternative, stylish, well traveled. They do a good job.
I will say, by the end of the tournament, I did see more people wearing gear from other teams. Including a dreadlocked white guy smoking a joint in a brand-new hot-pink Legion XIII hoodie at the Swedish House Mafia concert. LIV’s graphic designers love neon, and the colorways are pretty catchy.
Some of the support felt very post-ironic. An embrace of irony in a way that becomes genuine in the end. Some of the team names give rise to this naturally—Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs, for example. You buy a hat because you think it’s funny, but in the end you become a fan.
I kept hearing a phrase from LIV players, and LIV fans online, that they wish people would go to an event and see how fun it is, see how cool the team format is, not just listen to angry people online still holding a grudge against the league.
Honestly, they’re right. It’s an engaging live event.
The final day of the championship showed this, as the matchup between the top teams teetered back and forth the whole day. Each player’s score counted as part of their total. Bryson’s Crushers had the lead, but Rahm’s Legion XIII tied it up by the last hole.
In the end, it became essentially a match between Bryson and Rahm—fitting, for the two best players in the league. They went through two rounds in a sudden-death playoff, before Rahm and Tyrell Hatton birdied, and Bryson and Paul Casey didn’t match.
Rahm and Legion XIII won, and Bryson lost. The crowd was subdued for a moment, before applauding Rahm anyways.
Bryson’s fans packed the exit, kids shouted for autographs on their hats. His young YouTube fans, no doubt. They weren’t too bothered that he came in second place, though the look on his face showed he surely was. They were just excited to see him.
That’s the thing about sports, and golf in particular. Golf is more than a sport for many, it borders on the sacral, the holy. Playing or watching a sunset evening round, it’s hard not to feel that way yourself.
The split in the professional game felt like a desecration to some, one they’re unlikely to get over soon. They’re not wrong—they believe in the sacredness of golf.
They are wrong, however, to ascribe that sacredness to one institution. The PGA Tour doesn’t have a monopoly on golf, you know. No hatred for the PGA, but professional golf is professional golf. These guys are all getting paid, and chasing glory regardless of where they play.
LIV provides golf as pure, unabashed spectacle. You see it on TV, with the flashy scoreboards, the ball-tracing technology. You see it at the events, with the music, the partying, the decadence. It is not tame.
Yet within all that, the game is still the game, and these are some of the best players. Players still hit a ball, and chase it towards a hole. Silence still comes over the crowd on that final putt, that make or break moment when the day’s history is made.
That’s the beauty of it. Golf is bigger than a dispute between two leagues. Consider it a blessing, golf fans—for now, you have twice as much to watch.
Bobby Mars is art director of Michigan Enjoyer. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.
