Exclusive: Demand was ‘off the charts’ for LIV Golf event at historic venue

LIV Golf presented an opportunity to Hong Kong Golf Club during one of the most pivotal periods in the venue’s storied history.

Civil insurrection caused the cancellation of the 2019 Hong Kong Open and the split of the event’s long-term relationship with the DP World Tour (then the European Tour). Another heavy blow for the region followed in the next year when it found itself close to the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in China.

The event was postponed to the following January under the Asian Tour umbrella, but it didn’t return until 2023, the same year the club formed the World City Championship, aiming to return to a world where the 135-year-old institution was hosting professional golf tournaments regularly again.

The empty, doldrum atmosphere of lockdown and bitter thoughts of masks and restrictions were not completely cast from memory when LIV Golf expressed interest in hosting an event in Fanling and at a golf course that has hosted the same tournament for over 60 years, an accolade only shared by Augusta National.

“The Hong Kong Open was coming back. We always have that on the schedule and then LIV was something that had been discussed,” Alex Jenkins, Director of Communications at Hong Kong Golf Club, said. “LIV started in 2022. Obviously, in 2022, we’re in the grips of COVID in Hong Kong and nothing was happening.

“Some of our guys went down to the Bangkok (LIV Golf) event. We obviously have a very close association with the Asian Tour and LIV is close with the Asian Tour. It was just a natural process and it all made sense to us to have LIV because we’re an old club, but we’re not afraid to try new things.

“The Hong Kong Open, despite obviously all the rich history, never had a field like what a LIV field could bring to us. We’ve had great champions like Rory McIlroy and Olazabal and Harrington and all these people. But to get such a large number of truly world-class individuals, people you’d never get like Mickelson, DeChambeau, Koepka, Jon Rahm.”

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LIV Golf Hong Kong helped to bring top-level golf back to region after years in the doldrums

Golf finally made a much-needed return to Hong Kong’s sporting calendar. Despite losing the Hong Kong Ladies Open in 2019 with no sign of a return, the Aramco Team Series arrived at Hong Kong Golf Club last October, what Jenkins describes as the region’s biggest ladies golf event to date.

Sanctioned by the Ladies European Tour, this unique initiative combines professional and amateur players in a five-event series across the season which has attracted some of the biggest names in the women’s sphere such as Nelly Korda, Lexi Thompson, Carlota Ciganda and Charley Hull.

Like Valderrama where Greg Norman’s LIV roster has been in 2023 and 2024, Hong Kong Golf Club boasts an honours board to rival any establishment in the sport. Thomson, Norman himself, Woosnam, Langer, Watson, Olazabal, Harrington, Jimenez, Montgomerie, Poulter, McIlroy, and Rose are all etched in the Hong Kong Open’s rich list of trophy-lifters of years gone by.

There are about 120,000 regular golfers in Hong Kong and only five golf clubs, four of them being private. 50% of rounds played are non-members, so visitors play a vital role in a region where rugby sevens is a big passion, probably a bigger passion.

The Hong Kong Rugby Sevens fills the Hong Kong Stadium and is considered the premier event in the rugby sevens scene. But despite its status and adoration on the ground, the global coverage of the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens doesn’t reach the world’s four corners the same way golf can.

A jibe often thrown at LIV Golf by its detractors is that few people watch it and perhaps fewer people travel to see it in the flesh. So far, the circuit has attracted the contractual ink of the CW Network after being rumoured to be close to a deal with broadcasting giant Fox Sports. Fans in the UK can only watch LIV Golf on its app and for free on YouTube.

But Jenkins told NCG of a different picture, that the LIV Golf League brought patrons from 35 countries to its event back in March, won by former PGA Tour player Abraham Ancer, and an audience with a different vibe courtesy of those interested in the action both inside and outside the ropes.

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“We do get overseas interest for the Hong Kong Open, but not to the extent that LIV brought us so that was enormous and it was a different demographic, too,” Jenkins said. “That’s obviously what LIV have been saying themselves, you know, it does attract younger people.

“What I would say, I think the Hong Kong event certainly had all the regular Hong Kong Open-type golfers who would come and watch, but it did bring out a lot of relaxed, less sort of golf enthusiasts, keen, but more interested in having a good time.

“Hong Kong, despite the COVID thing… it’s a big party town. It’s a good night out on a Friday and Saturday. There’s a lot of that and actually hospitality did really well. The hospitality marquees, the Club 54, the big one behind the 18th green, the Gallery Club, the Birdie Shack. It sold out at the weekend which is very good and pretty obvious if you were at the golf course, you could hear them all.

“I’ll hand on heart say that when the first idea of LIV came out about two years ago, I was not a fan, put it that way,” he added.

“But when it actually arrived at the golf club and having weekly calls with the LIV comms guys leading up to it and even the same guys Performance54 who ran the last Hong Kong Open, doing all the setup and everything, we just talked to them to have an idea of the scale of what’s involved.

“What actually was really cool was the members embraced (the event)… our membership, like the club, is traditional, long-standing. We don’t get a huge turnover in membership at all, but they were really keen. So, we had tickets for LIV, and we had tickets for the Hong Kong Open for LIV. Tickets for LIV – the demand was off the charts.”

Hong Kong Golf Club is very keen for the Saudi-backed breakaway league to host another $25 million event in 2025, as the region looks to keep its golf shoe-covered foot on the gas pedal.

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