By Steve Keating
(Reuters) – LIV Golf has plans to crash the Super Bowl party in two weeks as the Saudi backed circuit makes its first American stop of the season looking for a badly needed boost to its U.S. profile.
Bank rolled by the Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and an unfamiliar team format have left many American golf fans cold but Bryson DeChambeau believes Las Vegas and LIV Golf are the perfect match.
Branded as “Golf, but louder”, there is the promise of plenty of hard core partying and night club vibe at the Las Vegas Country Club from Feb. 8-10.
The Birdie Shack, an open-air enclosure overlooking the eighth tee box, is where the hardiest revellers are directed to congregate the perch reserved for the “the loudest of the loud”.
Party Hole cabanas, already sold out for Saturday’s final round, offer an all-inclusive bar and advertised as just like having your own VIP booth in the coolest part of a club.
“Being Super Bowl week I can’t think of a better situation for us to showcase our product and just to showcase the talent we have out here,” DeChambeau, captain of the Crushers, said on Thursday in a conference call to preview the event. “I think it is going to be a spectacle.
“We haven’t been highlighted enough here in the States and I can’t wait to see what the response is going to be like.”
NO THREAT
DeChambeau’s Crushers going up against Phil Mickelson’s HyFlyers will be no threat to the NFL showcase no matter what teams make it to the Feb. 11 championship game but LIV is not alone among sports looking to ride the Super Bowl slip stream.
The UFC will have a card on Super Bowl eve while Formula One’s Alpha Tauri team will hold its 2024 car reveal on the Strip that week.
While this year’s event will be the first for LIV in Las Vegas, it is unlikely to be the last with the tour joining almost every other sport from the National Basketball Association to curling and pickleball looking to get a piece of the Sin City action.
There are 14 stops on the LIV Golf calendar this year with six in the U.S., underscoring the importance of the American market.
The Las Vegas Country Club was the venue for the PGA Tour’s first $1 million purse in 1993 and three decades on LIV will dish out prize money totalling $25 million at the same location.
“For Vegas it’s great for them to have more sports entering that market. I think that the city is only going to benefit,” said DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open champion.
“Vegas has a tradition and history of the casinos and gambling and all that which I think is going to be interesting for LIV Golf because we are starting to get into that a little bit more.
“I am excited for the time when we can start gambling on each hole, every hole, closet to the pin, longest drive that’s what LIV Golf wants to bring. It is the perfect environment for LIV Golf.”
One of the first to jump to the rebel circuit, DeChambeau said he is also looking forward to teeing it up again at PGA Tour events and believes the agreement that is being discussed would bring together the PGA Tour, DP Tour and LIV Golf.
“I think one day I will get to play in those events again,” said DeChambeau. “I think the deal is going to come quicker than you think. It may not be in the next couple of weeks, it could be in a month or so, but it’s going to happen.
“There’s no way around it now.
“Fans are hungry for us to come back together and I can’t wait for that day to happen.”
(Reporting by Steve Keating in Toronto, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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