For the second time in less than three months, a golf tournament in Australia will attract more than 100,000 fans, as the LIV Golf circus grips Adelaide for the fourth consecutive year.
Although no one in this weekend’s field goes close to matching the drawing power of five-time major winner Rory McIlroy, who drew 112,698 fans to the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne in December, fairways are still packed.
Bryson DeChambeau driving off the first tee this week at LIV Adelaide.Credit: Getty Images
The collective appeal of major winners, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Cam Smith, and the showbiz surrounding LIV will be enough to draw close to 130,000 people to The Grange Golf Club in Adelaide by the time the four-day tournament finishes on Sunday.
Both occasions reflect the soaring growth in golf’s popularity post COVID-19, with Golf Australia’s participation report published in December showing 4 million people played golf in 2024-25 and club memberships had risen 24.8 per cent since 2018.
Adelaide is LIV’s big deal; the showpiece of an innovative 14-tournament schedule that promised to upend world golf. For more than four years, the tour has dominated golfing discourse, as players contemplated the riches on offer from the Saudis to those willing to breakaway from the PGA Tour and join their rebel league as it tried to challenge the stranglehold the American and European tours had over the world’s best golfers.
Meeting that aim is proving difficult, and costly. A recent report in the Financial Times estimated it has cost the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund about $US5 billion since 2021.
Elvis Smylie back in his home country for LIV Adelaide after making a stunning debut on the tour.Credit: Getty Images
The tournament’s arrival this year could not be more timely as LIV’s momentum stutters following the departure of two of its biggest drawcards – Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed – who decided to return to the PGA Tour in 2026.
Their exits have made LIV vulnerable, particularly with DeChambeau out of contract at the end of the season and the ongoing speculation that Rahm regrets joining and would prefer to be playing on the PGA Tour. Both contracted players have denied having misgivings and declared their enthusiasm for LIV in 2026.
But the golfing world is watching to see whether LIV can emerge from the wobbles as it enters a crucial phase in its development.
“It’s a bit precarious. They can’t afford to lose Bryson and Rahm,” says Australian professional golfer Mike Clayton.
Of course, such realities rarely leave the lips of those connected to LIV as players or officials. They continually sell the concept with a fervour not seen, or required, on other tours.
Scott O’Neill, who replaced Greg Norman as the head of LIV, joined SA premier Peter Malinauskas on Thursday to reveal next year’s tournament would be played at Kooyonga in Adelaide from March 18-21 before moving to North Adelaide in 2028, where the centrally located course is being rebuilt.
His language was typical of the positive, occasionally overblown, expressions of all LIV Adelaide.
“This is an Aussie event, period, end of sentence. It is fun. It is lively. It’s a celebration of sport. It’s a celebration of culture and music and fashion,” O’Neill said.
Fans line the fairways on Friday at The Grange Golf Club, where this year’s LIV Adelaide tournament is being played.Credit: Getty Images
It’s also a celebration of the quick riches available to a chosen few in the sport, akin to racing’s The Everest at Randwick or the dollar-dazzling auctions that recruit the world’s best cricketers to the Indian Premier League.
To claw back some money, there are discussions about selling the franchises (teams) to private investors, while companies, including Rolex, have come on board.
“[LIV] has been great for the players because the money is nuts,” Clayton said.
Last week, LIV’s newest recruit, 23-year-old Australian Elvis Smylie, earned $US4 million plus a percentage of his team’s $US3million prize for his win at LIV Riyadh. That was three times what he earned in Australia and on the European Tour in all of 2025.
Smylie joined RipperGC, replacing Matt Jones in the All-Australian team of Smith, Marc Leishman and Lucas Herbert. His former mentor Smith sowed the seeds of Smylie’s recruitment in Adelaide last year, where he got caught up in the atmosphere of the event.
Smylie decided the benefits of LIV outweighed his alternative pathway to the top of world golf, where he aspires to be, and where Smith and Clayton think he can reach.
“I genuinely think he can be the best golfer in the world. He has got all the tools of the trade,” Smith said last week.
LIV Golf’s Cameron Smith.Credit: Getty Images
Clayton is also excited about Smylie, lauding both his swing and a temperament he says is perfect for golf.
If Smylie plays well, the money available to him will allow him to build wealth in three years, potentially compete in majors, as is his aim, and still be young enough to pivot towards a spot in the PGA Tour towards the end of his 20s.
“[It was a] wildly different decision for him (to join LIV) than it was for Cam Smith,” Clayton said.
No one begrudged Smylie the move, but his signing was not a game-changing development for LIV, which has not signed a top-10 player since Rahm joined in 2024. Smylie is hardly known outside Australia.
It merely reinforced a growing view that LIV might become a good place for young players to develop their golf and increase their bank balance. Even O’Neill spruiked the appeal the tour holds for emerging talent.
“You have the last two US Amateur champs, Josele Ballester and Michael La Sasso; [the player] who’s widely considered the best prospect to come out of Ireland since Rory with Tom McKibbin; Caleb Surratt is a hell of a player; Elvis Smylie clearly can play. We are starting to get … a really strong core of talent, and dare I say, some future major winners in our midst. It’s really exciting,” O’Neill said.
“I don’t think there’s a better place in the world for young talent to come than here at LIV.”
That may be the case, but Australians aren’t flocking to the tournament this weekend to watch the best under-25s in the world.
The presence of Rahm, DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Tyrell Hatton and Bubba Watson and the local stars are the reasons Australians back LIV.
But the majority – by far – of the world’s best players still play in America on The PGA Tour.
It’s why LIV players qualifying and performing well in the four majors – the US Masters, the US PGA, US Open and the Open Championships – is vital to the tour’s reputation.
Australian Marc Leishman playing in Adelaide on Friday.Credit: Getty Images
Moves have been made to bring the LIV tour closer to golf’s mainstream in 2026, as organisers realise they need world golf’s structures more than those hierarchical, sometimes stuffy, but entrenched and traditional networks need them.
LIV’s tournaments were originally played over 54 holes, but that has been increased to 72. And a decision this year by the Official World Golf Rankings to start recognising the top 10 placegetters in LIV tournaments with ranking points was a win. That decision will assist LIV players to qualify for the four majors in 2026 (Smylie moved from 134 to 77 last week as he strives to climb into the top 50 by March 30 so that he can qualify for the US Masters).
Clayton is sceptical whether LIV will ever carry enough depth to really challenge the PGA Tour. He thinks the only way the disruption could have a long-lasting impact on world golf is if LIV morphs into a combined tour featuring all the best players from Europe, Asia and Australia, which would be the realisation of the world tour concept once espoused by Australian golfing legend Peter Thomson.
“If LIV somehow did a deal with Europe (where the DP World Tour is played) and created one tour that was 35 tournaments and played for a lot of money, then that would be a great tour. You could take on the PGA Tour and try to get all the best non-American players,” Clayton said.
“The two key questions remain: Are the Saudis interested in funding that, as opposed to LIV, to see it develop into that? Are the next generation of tour professionals prepared to buy into a tour inside or outside America?”
He says America remains the better, more lucrative option right now.
On Sunday night when Fisher blasts his DJ set across the “Fan Village” at the Grange to complete a weekend of on-course partying, it’s a sure bet the thousands revelling in the atmosphere won’t be considering such lofty questions. They’ll be there to be entertained, which LIV does very well, in Adelaide at least.
As for Smith, he has announced publicly that he is comfortable sleeping in the bed he has made for himself at LIV.
“It’s only four years old. I think everyone forgets that,” Smith said in January. “We have come a long way in four years. I feel like we have got a lot of momentum as a league. It just needs time.”
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