DETROIT — On the grounds of Detroit Golf Club this week, there was precisely one reminder that there is a rival golf tour these days. When you walked through the opening gates to attend the Rocket Mortgage Classic, you were greeted by the "Wall of Champions" — Nate Lashley in 2019, Cam Davis in 2021, and smack dab in the middle, Bryson DeChambeau, who won in 2020, signed an endorsement contract with Rocket Mortgage in 2021, then left the PGA Tour in 2022, joining the upstart and controversial LIV golf circuit.
DeChambeau this week took his bag and balls to Bedminster, which was hosting the Saudi Arabia-financed LIV tour's third tournament of its inaugural season. And while the national attention was on New Jersey, where the event was tackily held 45 miles from Ground Zero (on a Donald Trump course, with the former president a VIP all week), if anybody in Detroit gave a rip about DeChambeau or fellow defectors Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed and, new this week, Bubba Watson, well, they weren't saying.
LIV had zero effect on the fourth playing of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, which yet again yielded bunches of birdies, two aces and a star champion in Tony Finau, while welcoming back another large Sunday gallery — the 18th green around 6 p.m. was more congested than I-96 at rush hour — all while basking in a Detroit narrative that, as tournament executive director Jason Langwell said, "is ours."
