Further reflections from the London Invitational

My take on what worked (and what didn't) as LIV Golf got underway in England yesterday

“I know twenty guys who want to do this,” Phil Mickelson is quoted as saying late last year. “If the PGA Tour doesn’t do the right thing, there’s a high likelihood it’s going to happen.”

Reading those words in the closing pages of Alan Shipnuck’s Phil book on the plane home from England resonated like the thwack of clubface on ball amid the Augusta-style pines on the Centurion Club’s front nine. Because yesterday, of course, ‘it’ really did happen. And I’m glad I was there to witness the moment.

(It’s a shame I won’t be able to stick around for the weekend at the London Invitational, but I’ve got an assignment covering the Le Mans 24 Hours for my old colleagues at Autosport.)

I already wrote up my first and most powerful impressions from golf’s most divisive tournament late last night. (You can read those here.) Today, I’ll round up a few of the other things that struck me during a day of wandering the course and taking it all in.

Fan friendly

Considering this was a pilot event with a short lead time, LIV Golf mostly delivered on its promise to bring some extra value to fans – including families and those who might not be among the hard core willing to jostle their way around 18 holes with the feature group including Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.

I’m probably not the best person to judge these things, because I’m there for the sport and have nil interest in merchandising stands, rock concerts or spending entire afternoons in the beer tent. And I certainly don’t need a playground to make my day work! But I did speak to a wide range of spectators at the venue, including one with a young child in tow. I’ll publish their audio clips in due course, but I can tell you I heard nothing but praise with regard to the off-course attractions.

One of the big lines splashed around Centurion was ‘Golf, but louder.’ Pumping tunes on the driving range and around the first tee, which continued right up until the shotgun start, ensured this was no lie. So too did the marching bands in Buckingham Palace-style uniforms, which weren’t the only distinctly British touch on display.

(It will be interesting to see what such touches will look like in America and, ahem, Saudi Arabia. Black cabs shuttled the players to their tee boxes in London – how about they jump on board a camel when this thing goes to the desert?)

Criticisms? There was a distinct lack of toilet options and signposts telling you where to find them. If you didn’t pick up a drawsheet and course map on the way in, you might have had to hold it in for several minutes whilst asking passers-by for directions.

As for the food and drink prices, these were probably reasonable given the mark-up you would expect at a sporting event and the extreme inflation currently going on in the United Kingdom. On a budget as ever, I got through the day on a punnet of ‘cheesy chips’ (it’s a British thing) that set me back six pounds. Soft drinks, at 2.80, were also just on the right side of the ridiculousness line given the context.

There was suitable sustenance on hand for the large South African contingent in the field…

Teething troubles

A few stutters are to be expected in this situation. But I was impressed with just how isolated they were.

The only really noticeable issue was a lack of adequate person-power out on the course. This became immediately apparent when the crowd surged straight down the fairway after the Mickelson group teed off, largely ignoring the ropes. I don’t think this was down to the spectators being ignorant of golf protocol, it’s just that there were precious few voices there to shoo them away from accidentally landing up where they shouldn’t have been.

Some access paths and crosswalks were also unpoliced, leading caddies to have to yell at meandering carts from tee boxes.

Transport & Access

Communication to ticket holders ahead of the event was generally good, with the ‘How to Get There’ page helpfully pointing out that there were bus stops outside the entrance – a rarity in the rural settings where golf clubs are typically found. I made full use of that an accessed the course by public transport. This was slow and limited, but that’s not the organisers’ fault.

What they can look at – or need to push harder on if they did – is supplementing that public transport with shuttles. Following a loud campaign to let car drivers know that there wouldn’t be any parking on site and they should avail themselves of a free park and ride system, it felt a little like spectators troubling to take a greener approach were an afterthought. Considering the surplus of car park shuttles hanging around the gates on Thursday evening, it was annoying to have to wait half an hour for one of the rare public buses heading to St Alban’s Station.

Considering LIV Golf did its share of trumpeting its environmental credentials at the venue (kudos for the separate recycling bins on tee boxes), I look forward to the organisers helping punters travelling to the area by train at future events.

Team dynamics

In yesterday’s piece, I noted a slight lack of competitive fire on display. Watching the players prepare on the putting green put me in mind of star cricketers at the big-money Indian Premier League. They want to win for the young franchises that bought them, sure – but they’re also there to enjoy themselves and fulfil their contracts. It’s not the career-defining, emotional stuff of serious international cricket or chasing World Cups for your country. Some of them are past that phase of their careers anyway.

Many would say there are certain parallels with LIV Golf. That may quickly change, of course. More big names signing on will go a long way to juicing things up for the handful that have made the move so far. Perhaps the team concept is just a temporary way of adding a bit of spice for the players until that happens?

Whether it achieved that at this early stage is a question for the men with the clubs in their hands. Some of the spectators I spoke to were interested in the team idea – but for me, it got in the way.

This came into sharp relief as I watched a few groups come through the fourth hole. The digital leaderboard was all very snazzy, but for long periods of time, it was looped on the team standings (see photo below). Over and over again it informed me that the Crushers were two clear of the Majesticks by two strokes, rather than telling me how the golfers in front of me were doing on their rounds. (Mini-leaderboards for the group were also conspicuously absent.) I didn’t feel the slightest inclination to cross-reference which players even made up those teams. It was an actively annoying reminder of how little I cared about the progress of these contrived squads.

They weren’t wearing uniforms. They weren’t playing in a group together. Apart from the understated team name on the caddie’s bib, there was nothing at all to help me connect with this abstract contest I wasn’t that keen on in the first place.

But, as I said in my preview piece, this was a pilot and all of these things are going to be reviewed. Maybe the team thing will soon be surplus to requirements. With the LIV Golf story getting new twists every day, there’s no point speculating too much.

Make sure to hit the subscribe button below for my spectator audio vox pops from the London Invitational and my review of Phil – direct to your inbox over the next few days.