Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images

By Matt Smith
I have been out here at many LIV Golf events and the first thing that strikes you is it feels like a family.

A lot of people regard it as a travelling circus with its shotgun starts and it is easy to dismiss. I find it interesting that many people who are ‘anti-LIV’ have never bothered to come down to an event, to any of the tournaments, and experience it for themselves. They think that when the players and the guys involved say how much they love it out here it is just lip-service. 

It is not. 

As I said, it feels like a family. Unlike a normal event on the PGA Tour, LIV guys on a team — everyone is together: they leave the hotel together, travel together, get to the course together, eat together, practise on the range together before each round. Thanks to the shotgun start and the unity, everything is a constant right down to signing your cards at the same time, even if you are different groups. The feeling is a lot of camaraderie. 

It is something I have never felt before and many player will have never felt before. 

It is alien to the lone-wolf mentality of many players — guys like Dustin Johnson, Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, Phil Mickelson: they got great by being lone wolves. But now as team captains, you see this whole different side to them as they watch the leaderboard to see how their guys are getting on and, if they get a chance, sit out on the course and watch their teammates finish off, like we saw in the late-finishing play-offs in Bangkok and Jeddah.

The structure and the way everyone is treated — I am just a coach, not even a player — it makes you feel you are part of something. The coach, the manager, the caddie, when the team goes out to eat once a week, it is for everyone. They are all part of a team, a family.

I don’t think people realise how serious the team captains take the team element of the competition. Many think it is all just about the money. 

It is fun to be a part of. I have been lucky enough to be involved with players on the Ryder Cup and it is always fun to be involved in weeks like that where players come together as a group. That is week in, week out on LIV Golf. 

I have spent 20 years on the PGA and on the European Tour, and it is hard to get players to agree on some things. Here on the LIV tour it is so inclusive, it makes the players feel like they are part of something. 

In all my time I have never bought any PGA or European Tour merchandise. Here, I have. Before I had bought nothing with a logo on it as a coach as I never felt part of it, but now I do. 

I fundamentally do not understand the PGA Tour feud. If this is where you want to play, that is your choice to make. I am good with that. If you want to play on the PGA Tour, I don’t have a problem with that either. I just don’t get the animosity and why it has become so political. No other sport is like this. 

If you are a viewer and prefer the PGA, go for it. That’s OK. But every player should have the right to play where they want and earn as much money for their family as they can.

If Rory [McIlroy] gets an invitation from another organisation to play, he has earned that right. He has earned the right to make as much money as possible. I don’t get how the 48 players on LIV are the only ones who don’t get that right. 

The quality on LIV is unreal, too. I have worked with DJ [Dustin Johnson] for a decade and he says he is playing the best golf of his career right now. 

Players like Cam Smith? If there was a major tomorrow, Cam, DJ, Brooks Koepka, they would all be in with a chance to win it.

And the field will be stronger in 2023 as they will get Bubba Watson back playing following his recovery from knee injury. I expect to see him out on the course next year and also at the Saudi International.

There may be a narrative that the quality of golf on LIV is poor, but there is no dip.

If a player signs for Manchester United and gets paid a lot more money, they don’t go down in form. They are not phoning it in. They are delivering like the guys out here.

These guys, the ones who are winning, they would be winning on the PGA Tour. It will be exciting to see what happens. The PGA will continue, of course, but now there is an alternative and that is exciting. 

Claude Harmon III was speaking at the LIV Golf Jeddah event at Royal Greens Golf Club in Saudi Arabia, and is one of the world’s top golf coaches, looking after players such as Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson

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