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LIV Golf has certainly been no stranger to controversy since its inception in 2022, as the upstart league has had an incredible amount of trouble emerging from the various shadows that hover over the organization as it continues to try to go toe-to-toe with the PGA Tour.
As a result, you have to imagine it was pretty pleased with what unfolded when it headed down to Australia for an event that was held at The Grange Golf Club in Adelaide last month.
Cameron Smith helped firm up LIV’s reputation as the “fun” golf league when he chugged hard seltzer out of a shoe (a.k.a. “did a shoey”) at a DJ set that was held during the event, and Chase Koepka was responsible for its most viral moment to date thanks to the electric reaction to the hole-in-one he hit (a development that spawned at a wildly unfounded but nonetheless entertaining conspiracy theory).
However, according to The Advertiser, it seems a bit doubtful The Grange will be welcoming LIV Golf back with open arms based on what’s unfolded since the tournament came to an end.
The country club—which has an annual membership fee of more than $4,000—has reportedly been flooded with angry complaints from members who are furious about the state of the course thanks to the damage LIV allegedly left in its wake.
That includes turf issues purportedly stemming from the horde of spectators that spent three days packed around the “Watering Hole” where Koepka holed his aforementioned ace in addition to lingering effects of other temporary installations one local golfer asserted has forced them to play on a “compromised” course for over a month.
One man who’s said he’s been a member of The Grange for 45 years believes it will take six months for the tract to fully recover, although the club’s general manager said it conducted a survey that showed “86 percent of responders were ‘satisfied or very satisfied'” with the event as a whole.
This isn’t the first time LIV has caught heat for supposedly failing to adequately respect a venue, as some unauthorized cactus removal was a sore spot when it hosted a tourney in Arizona earlier this year.