LIV Golf’s first-ever event was chaotic, confusing and controversial. What has changed in four years?

On June 7, I got up at something like 5 am to steam down the M1 towards St Albans, or Hemel Hempstead – wherever Centurion Club can be found.

The event certainly wasn’t in London, where the new LIV Golf League had marketed it.

I think I’d planned to go on Wednesday, but there was a late change of plan as LIV’s first-ever press conference schedule arrived late on Monday and detailed an early kick-off the next morning. It was unmissable, for sure.

I was doing something that no other golf reporter in the world could say they’d done to that point, despite only being in my second year of golf writing, and the vast presence of national papers, fellow golf publications and the multitude of US reporters that attended.

The then LIV boss Greg Norman had attracted Golf.com, Sports Illustrated and ESPN, even with the US Open at Brookline starting in the week after.

Dustin Johnson and Graeme McDowell were among the first press conference subjects in this newest of dawns in pro golf, the thing I’d left my Salford flat for bright and early.

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LIV was being funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), now nearing a trillion dollars in worth. Despite such mindblowing degrees of investment, this inaugural occasion was rather put up overnight, though, or so it seemed.

There were teams, but no uniforms. Stands to sit in, but they weren’t grand. And respectfully, barring about six names, the field didn’t warrant a second glance.

DJ revealed he had resigned his PGA Tour membership, and McDowell admitted he’d made a business decision to leave the game’s established tours for a big bag of cash. Two days later, this pair plus Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter played in LIV’s first-ever event.

During the week, former Associated Press reporter Rob Harris was temporarily ejected from the media centre after confronting former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, enquiring if he ‘had blood on his hands’.

This somewhat set the tone for the week, and epitomised the surreal, awkward nature of each press conference.

Given how wet my ears were at the time, I wondered if it was always like this.

LIV Golf Centurion event started what became four years of chaos

Neil McLeman of the Mirror asked Westwood and Poulter if they’d play in an event held by Vladimir Putin, or Apartheid South Africa, in the backdrop of a week being bankrolled by a nation with a questionable-at-best human rights record.

Dan Roan of the BBC also asked Mickelson if he could now be seen as a ‘Saudi stooge’.

I asked one towards the end, whether Phil had contemplated the reception he’d receive if he actually won the US Open. He gave a witty reply and somewhat got everyone back onside with a chuckle. What better way to summarise the great many contradictions of the man?

It was comments from Alan Shipnuck’s remarkable book about the six-time major champion that not only led to this commotion but also allegedly nearly burned down the LIV house before it was built.

On pro-am day, a very sunny day, Mickelson and Westwood played together, with Asian Tour CEO Cho Minn Thant. While walking behind the group down the fairway on one hole, I was shooed away by Mickelson’s henchman.

It was a cagey week for that camp. Mickelson had missed the Masters during his hiatus from the game, into which he retreated after these on-record/off-record comments to Shipnuck were made public:

“They’re scary motherf*****s to get involved with,” he said of the Saudis. “We know they killed (Jamal) Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”

He was peppered with questions relating to human rights abuses, the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, and the contradiction of his incendiary words about the Kingdom, and accepting a reported $200 million cheque to play on its golf tour.

The press wasn’t finished with Mickelson at the US Open a week later, where he was stung with probes from one reporter who brought up the 9/11 families’ dismay at players taking cash from a nation linked with the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

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London taxis shuttled the players to each tee box of the shotgun start. Men dressed as royal guards welcomed marquee groups on the first tee.

Stood outside on the wooden decking after round one, former Ryder Cup teammates McDowell and Garcia took questions, while over my shoulder, a bouncer prevented Mickelson’s biographer Shipnuck from even approaching the media tent, let alone reaching the door.

Norman denied knowledge of all of this, but Shipnuck later made him blush by posting an image of the Aussie lurking in the background, watching the chaos unfold.

It wasn’t until after the first round that players such as Westwood and Poulter discovered the PGA Tour had suspended them for playing at Centurion.

We all huddled around Westwood, a former World No.1 and Ryder Cup legend, hovering our phones under his chin for a reaction. Poulter was given the same treatment a few minutes later.

“I haven’t resigned because I don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong. I’ve been all over the world for 25 years, played a lot of tournaments outside of continental Europe, all in a calendar season,” Poulter said.

As a reporter, my word, what a week. The action on the course was meaningless. Former Masters champion Charl Schwartzel won $4,750,000. His move to LIV was already vindicated, and these purses became the norm both with LIV and in response, the PGA Tour too, in an attempt to keep up in the prize money marathon.

It wasn’t long after that when Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka and Joaquin Niemann hopped over to LIV, then Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton later.

Koepka and Reed left at the start of this year, news which seemed to get the ball rolling in a dangerous direction.

It isn’t long until the fourth anniversary of that bonkers week in St Albans/Hemel Hempstead. 

When I sat in my 2010 Ford Focus on my fourth coffee of the morning, preparing to come off at junction 8 down Breakspear Way, I was about as sure of what was going to happen with this new league, and we could all say the same right now.

Confusion seems to be the current feeling among the LIV ranks, based on various reports and what anonymous sources have been prepared to reveal.

The 2026 season will go on with Saudi funding, but beyond that, a significant change is expected. That is about as much as we know as fact at this stage. LIV Louisiana at the end of June might be axed/rearranged, adding to the uncertainty.

The feeling of the unknown, and the intrigue that branched from it, used to be LIV’s strength. Now, this feeling forms a cloud over its future.

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