In a late 19th-century issue of Vanity Fair a caricature of famous big-bearded cricketer WG Grace carried a caption that read simply ‘Cricket’. In Australia, from about 1980, a Greg Norman version might have read ‘Golf’. The man was Australian golf. He didn’t have to sky-dive from planes to promote tournaments (though he did), his presence was enough. And it still is.
This weekend Norman has brought LIV Golf to The Grange Golf Club in Adelaide, and Australian sports fans, as ever, appear powerless against his siren song. The golf course is heaving with over 35,000 fans daily. Admission has been sold out for all three rounds. A ticket into the ‘Cellar Door’ marquee back of the 12th green – known as the ‘Watering Hole’ and styled like the PGA Tour’s ‘Party Hole’ in Arizona – is $1200. The hole is surrounded by similar marquees and ‘sky boxes’. After a golfer’s shot, good or bad, plastic beer cups rain onto the tee like frothy white mortars.
