LIV Golf’s South African debut harks back to the Sun City heyday

It’s not often that hype matches the reality, but LIV Golf South Africa’s debut promises to fulfil the marketing and promotional promises with 90,000 tickets sold for the four-day event at Steyn City.

Not since the heyday of the Nedbank Golf Challenge (NGC) at Sun City, which peaked (in terms of the fields) in the late 1990s to early 2000s, has there been so much interest around a golf event in South Africa.

Perhaps the 2003 President’s Cup at Fancourt was bigger with Tiger Woods and Ernie Els competing in their primes, but as a strokeplay event, LIV Golf South Africa might be the biggest tournament on these shores.

The Saudi-backed breakaway league is making its African debut this week, and judging by the response, it might be the start of a special relationship.

Golf purists and traditionalists can argue for weeks on the merits of LIV and its place in golf’s changing ecosystem. But there is little doubt that away from the US and parts of Britain and Europe, there is an entire golfing community that has welcomed the upstart league.

In Australia, LIV has gained massive popularity through its Adelaide stop and in Asia, its reach is growing. The Asian Tour has become a bona fide feeder tour to LIV Golf. And judging by the thousands of tickets sold, South Africans are voting with their feet too.

“I think the economic impact we’ll drive will be somewhere in the $40-million to $50-million range,” LIV Golf chief executive Scott O’Neil told Daily Maverick.

“I think that’s very conservative. We’ll be able to create one job in this market for every 13 tourists we bring in.”

O’Neil believes South Africa is the “perfect” market for LIV because it checks all four of its boxes for successful expansion. “It’s a world-class course. It’s a world-class resort. You’re in a city and a country that understands, loves and celebrates golf,” O’Neil said. “And we have a chance to come in and make a difference. This is as good as it gets for us.”

Despite the hefty price of tickets, ranging from R750 for the Ground pass, to the wide variety of luxury hospitality packages ranging from R3,500 to the top-of-the-range Legends Circle costing R75,000 for the week, the tickets have sold out.

Kids under 12 enter free, adding a clever layer of marketing to the event.

Money talks

LIV’s South African debut is not without complications. The Sunshine Tour, which has for so long been the backbone of the professional game in this country, is not involved in the tournament in any way.

The Sunshine Tour is aligned with the DP World Tour (DPWT), which in turn is an ally of the PGA Tour in golf’s civil war.

Reserve players for the event would normally be drawn from the local tour – in this case, the Sunshine Tour. But due to its strategic alliances, the Sunshine Tour did not sanction its members to be available as alternates for LIV South Africa.

While the Sunshine Tour’s position is understandable, given its long relationship with the DPWT and the PGA, it does feel a little hollow that it is absent from the country’s biggest golf event in history.

Players are independent contractors, though, so there might still be an opportunity for a promising South African golfer to be on standby should someone withdraw.

While this being the biggest tournament yet in South Africa might sound hyperbolic given the NGC’s and SA Open’s legacies, there has never been a $30-million prize pool ($20-million for the individual and $10-million for the team) at a golf event in this country.

That easily makes LIV South Africa the biggest and richest in this country in professional history, surpassing the $7.5-million the NGC offered between 2017 and 2019.

While the NGC broke the bank in 1981 by offering golf’s first million-dollar purse, LIV’s debut at Steyn City dwarfs that.

At $30-million (R500-million), it is nearly five times the size of “Africa’s Major” at Sun City.

The individual winner at Steyn City will take home $4-million, nearly triple the entire prize fund of the South African Open.

Dean Burmester, who is one of the four South Africans in the Southern Guards team, is the embodiment of LIV’s allure.

For 12 years on the Sunshine Tour and DPWT, Burmester amassed a respectable $7-million in prize money. Since joining LIV in 2023, he has earned more than $31-million, which excludes his LIV signing-on fee.

In Chicago last year, Burmester took home $4.75-million for winning the individual and team events simultaneously, more than half his pre-LIV career earnings in a single week.

While LIV is working to establish itself as a sustainable tour, the reality is that money talks.

It has wooed the likes of major winners such as Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Louis Oosthuizen and Sergio Garcia, among others.

Players impressed

LIV has repositioned itself from being an antagonistic force to focusing on sustainable growth, with the hope of eventually weaning itself off the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) hundreds of billions of dollars of backing.

It will take far more events with the support expected in South Africa to achieve that goal, but LIV is in the unique position of not being subject to “normal” economic pressures, given the $1-trillion PIF backstop.

Rahm, who won in Hong Kong in round three of the 14 tournament season, is on his first visit to South Africa and was impressed with what he’d seen so far.

“I’m very happy to be here and very convinced it’s going to be a really fun tournament,” Rahm said earlier this week.

“My only regret is I wish I had time to stay afterwards and enjoy South Africa a little bit more. But I’m sure I'll have time in the future. We’ve been looking forward to this for a while.

“I’ve been speaking quite a bit to the Southern Guard boys, and anytime I speak to them, my expectations get higher. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I’m really looking forward to what the South African crowd is going to be like on the weekend.”

Paul Casey, a long-time top 10 player before joining LIV and regular visitor to South Africa, was not surprised to hear that 90,000 tickets had been sold.

“This is a global tour, so it was only a matter of time (before LIV came to SA),” Casey said.

“South African golf has always been world class. As long as I've been playing, we always looked up to a lot of South African players and their skills.

“I’m happy to be down here. I’ve played golf in South Africa many times. It’s good to be back. Never played here (at Steyn City), but I know how much golf means in this part of the world, so I know it’s going to be an exciting week.”

DeChambeau is the biggest name in the field alongside Rahm. The pair have become the face of the tour, and on his first visit to South Africa, Bryson’s impressions were positive.

“A part of our mission is becoming more global,” DeChambeau said.

“I’ve always wanted to come here. Talking to Louis (Oosthuizen) and the whole Southern Guards team, obviously, they just rave how great it is, obviously, and coming here and seeing how special the hospitality is, the people, the culture and the way that everybody conducts themselves, it’s quite amazing.

“The world is a big place. It’s amazing to see how great humanity is.” DM