SHOEYS GONE WILD – LIV GOLF IS BACK

LIV Golf Adelaide 2023 was like a music festival running through a golf tournament.

The Grange sported beer tents and food caravans, and chubby half-nude American comedians and DJs doing shoeys. There were tens of thousands of 20-somethings who didn’t feel corralled or bossed around by security types in bright bibs. It felt less a golf tournament as a movement. It felt free.

The famous golfers, particularly the one-name Americans – DJ, Brooks, Bryson, Phil – were a big lure, as were the Australians in their Ripper GC kit. Ripper’s gear, as one would expect, comfortably outsold other teams’, though there were queues outside the merchandise tent for all people could get.

Lucas Herbert didn’t watch

LIV Adelaide last year; he was busy winning the ISPS HANDA Championship in the similar time zone of Japan. He caught the highlights, like the rest of us, of Chase Koepka’s hole-in-one and the tsunami of beermist that followed. He says he and the rest of the Ripper team is “very, very excited for Adelaide.”

“I didn’t hear anything bad about it, that’s for sure. Talk to every player on LIV, it’s the event they’re all looking forward to. I mean, it got voted best golf event in the world [at the World Golf Awards],” Herbert says.

The par-3 12th ‘Watering Hole’ will again be an epi-centre of attention and Herbert, being the new guy, being Australian, will be a crowd favourite and heralded onto the tee. One assumes he might find that half-nerve-wracking…

Herbert disagrees. “I’ll find it fully nerve wracking,” he says. “It’ll definitely get the adrenaline going. It’s scary and exciting. It’s the closest thing we’ll get to playing on the MCG in front of 100,000 people or something like that. It’s a very cool environment. It’s a lot of fun.”

Herbert says he’ll prepare for it by accepting that he can only control his golf swing.

“I think the more you try and fight that environment and calm things down to get people quiet and control everything, the worse it’s going to be. So you have to accept what’s coming.

“You have to think, it’s not the end of the world if I hit a bad shot. Everyone might give you some stick but it’s not like you’re going to die.”

Herbert will also prepare for the inevitable demands to drink from his golf shoes by wearing new golf shoes. “I’m also not much of a beer drinker,” he says. “Hope they find me something else.”

Talor Gooch shot back-to-back 62s last year which took him to 20-under before coasting to victory, three ahead of Anirban Lahiri (-16) with Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, Cameron Tringale and Pat Perez all a shot further back.

Dustin Johnson’s 4 Aces will defend the teams crown after finishing on -47, two shots head of Bubba Watson’s RangeGoats. Ripper GC finished 16 shots adrift in eighth position.

LIV Golf Adelaide will be played at The Grange GC from April 26 to 28.