Saturday At LIV Golf Michigan

Saturday’s LIV Golf Michigan opened with a para drop and ended with an Imagine Dragons concert.

In between, there was a party: Loud music on every hole with people dancing (what is this rhythmic hand dancing folk do nowadays? But I digress); activities for the kids; and plenty of food and drink (I saw one guy passed out on the ground – he was with what looked like several friends, so I didn’t call for an EMT).

And oh yeah. There was golf.

On Saturday, crowds at The Cardinal swelled.

Friday was fairly well attended. I would put it on par with some of the weekday LPGA events I’ve attended. Fans were one deep around many greens and tee boxes. In the central area near the first, fourth, fourteenth and seventeenth green, and the second, eighth and sixteenth tee boxes fans were two and three deep. Along fairways between tee and green there were few observers (read more of my thoughts on Friday at LIV Michigan at the link).

My best guess is that Saturday doubled, or maybe tripled that. For the premier pairings, fans were three and four deep around tees and greens. Those same groups had fans along the fairway edges.

Bryson DeChambeau and Taylor Gooch play shots from the fairway.

But just a few minutes later, a lesser-known group had scarce spectators.

Still, overall, it was a full house.

I think the match play format confused more than a few fans. One asked me why a player picked up his ball on the green. Another — in prime position to see Phil and Rahmbo tee off on eighteen — asked why they quit on seventeen (the answer to that is that Rahm was 2 up after 17.)

As a teacher, I learned that if one kid asks a question, half the class wants to know the answer. I suspect there were a lot of people at LIV Michigan who are not “core” golfers or golf fans. They were there out of curiosity or for the concert. That’s fine. Maybe they will enjoy the experience and want to go to other golf tournaments.

I actually got a lot of questions from spectators throughout the round: Where do the buses pick up? Where is the nearest refreshment tent? And at the concert: “Is there another gate. I can’t get through the crowd to go out the way I came in?”

I think I got the questions because I was wearing a badge on a lanyard. Spectators had wrist ribbons.

One thing that made me chuckle was the lines of golf carts preparing to ferry the players out to their starting holes at the beginning of the day. It looked exactly like the carts arranged at every scramble before an outing.

Another thing that amused me were the volunteers on every tee box holding up “Zip It” signs for quiet while music was blaring in the background (yes, the signs said “Zip It” not “Quiet”).

While Richard Bland was trying to tee off on three, his caddy kept yelling at a LIV golf media cart to stop driving about but they couldn’t hear him for the music.

The Mickelson – Rahm pairing swelled throughout the day. By the time it ended on the seventeenth (Rahm 2 and 1), it was madness. Seventeen is right on the edge of the central core, so it seems everyone there migrated over to the final putt of that match.

To his vast credit, Mickelson hung around to sign autographs.

The Dechambeau – Gooch pairing also always seemingly had a crowd around it.

Interestingly, when I caught up with the Koepka – Lahiri pairing, it was largely unobserved.

The Imagine Dragons concert at the end of the match play was your basic human crush. I am not at all the target audience for Imagine Dragons, but everyone there seemed to be really enjoying it.

Winning teams from Saturday were Legion XIII, Crushers and Stingers. I think. The LIV website’s leaderboard is inscrutable.

I have no idea who is on those teams, so I looked it up:

• Legion XIII: Rahm, Hatton, McKibbin and Surratt.
• Crushers: DeChambeau, Casey, Howell and Lahiri
• Stingers: Oosthuizen, Burmester, Grace and Schwartzel.

Looking ahead, Sunday’s rounds are stroke play, with each team’s score coming from all four players’ scores on the team.

Teams earn final positions based on their finishes in the respective tiers.

1st-3rd – Championship Bracket Finalists

4th-6th – Losing teams from the Championship Bracket Semifinals

7th-9th – Winning teams from the Rankings Bracket

10th-12th – Losing teams from the Rankings Bracket