[PHOTO: Getty Images]
An appropriate motto for phase one of LIV Golf Adelaide, created in 2023 under a four-year deal with the South Australian government, was, “Build it and they will come.”
But after former LIV Golf chief executive Greg Norman and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas helped create the biggest golf tournament in Australia, a more accurate slogan is, “Build it successfully, and they will come after it.”
They, meaning other states. With 100,000 fans expected through the gates for the third edition of LIV Golf Adelaide, held at The Grange Golf Club among Adelaide’s beachside suburbs, LIV Adelaide has quickly grown into one of the biggest sporting events in the country.
Put that down to homegrown superstar and Open champion Cameron Smith returning every year and, with his Ripper GC franchise, winning the teams title last year. Smith has been joined by a band of confirmed LIV big guns such as Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson. Crowds know what they’re getting – a group of big names with big games.
The showpiece of the entire tournament is the par-3 12th, called the Watering Hole, where thousands of fans line the 151-metre hole. In 2022, Chase Koepka, younger brother of Brooks, made a hole-in-one and the reaction of the raucous crowd created LIV’s most viral moment.
The tournament is three years into a four-year deal brokered by two-time Open winner Norman and Malinauskas. Now, he’s fending off interest to keep it in South Australia after 2026. But Malinauskas was defiant today at a press conference alongside new LIV chief executive, Scott O’Neil, that he’d do everything in his power to prevent it being “pinched” by other Australian states. He acknowledged that South Australia keeping the event – which offers its 54 players a total of almost $A40 million in prizemoney – was not a given. Big sporting spectacles wrestled away from South Australia include the Formula 1 Grand Prix, which is now staged in Melbourne.
“Look, we’ve made no secret of the fact that we understand it’s a competitive environment,” Malinauskas said. “Part of our frustration is South Australia has a history of going first on an event, building it up to be something magnificent and then other jurisdictions come to try to pinch it off of us. As I said earlier, we’re going to earn the right. I can’t look [O’Neil] in the eye and say, ‘Look, you have to bring LIV back to Adelaide just because we’ve had it before.’ We have to earn the right to be here. We have to show we’re committed to it. We’ve to show we are invested in it. That’s the collaboration. We’re not resting on our laurels. We understand there are other jurisdictions that would like this event. I get that. We’ve just got to work at it.”
Malinauskas also praised Norman in his vision for LIV Adelaide. Australia had been starved of world-class golf, given they only saw the top men’s golfers infrequently, between a marquee name or two at the Australian Open each year, or the Presidents Cup in 1998, 2011 and 2019, and several editions of the World Cup of Golf.
“We [wouldn’t be] here doing this in South Australia if not for Greg’s vision and leadership,” Malinauskas said. “But more than that, also the practice of good judgment. The easiest thing for Greg to have done at the time was to have put this event on the eastern seaboard of Australia in Sydney. That’s the orthodox thing to do. And he exercised the judgment to take a risk and put it here in Adelaide, and the rest is history.
“To that end, I don’t just have a sense of gratitude, I have a hope and an expectation, that to the extent that Greg is able to be involved in the event in the future, that’s obviously something we want to embrace, and Scott and I were talking about this earlier, and we’re really happy about it. I’m catching up with Greg over the next couple of days, which will be great just to catch up as a mate as much as anything else but also just to talk about ideas and golf more broadly.
“I think the thing that I’m aware of, and you forgive me for not wanting to make sure that South Australia puts top of its mind, is there is an Olympics coming to this country in the not-too-distant future. Greg is now on the organising committee. Greg sees the power of collaboration with government.”
One reporter asked, tongue-in-cheek, “Scott, you’ve said that you’ll be focusing on Adelaide. So would it take an offer you can’t refuse to move it from Adelaide and go to another Australian jurisdiction?”
“That’s a well-phrased question,” O’Neil responded. “Our intention is to be back in Adelaide. We have had interest, as you might imagine, given the success of this event. But I started this press conference just by talking about, like, the key elements and ingredients, and you don’t have to look too far when you have extraordinary civic leadership, a world class golf course, a place where our players are comfortable, you have extraordinary restaurants, the hospitality is great, and the people are great. I hope that we’re here for a very long time. That’s the intention.”
