THIS SUMMER, golf is everywhere you look.
The LIV Golf Tour hits Westfield on August 15–17, showcasing some of the best players in the sport. This event is a huge opportunity for The Club at Chatham Hills to host this tournament of international stars.
Chatham Hills was christened in September 2016 with legendary golf course designer Pete Dye hitting the first drive off the No. 1 tee. His wife, Alice, soon followed. Chatham is the last golf course the World Golf Hall of Fame architect designed and built before his passing in 2020. Many say he considered it his masterpiece, and he was deeply involved in every aspect of the course’s creation, spending countless hours on-site.
The league’s name, LIV, is the Roman numeral for the number 54, which corresponds to the number of holes played.
LIV Golf features a 54-hole, no-cut format with 48 players organized into 12 teams, while the PGA Tour typically has 72 holes, a cut, and primarily focuses on individual competition with larger fields. The three-round event also utilizes shotgun starts, where all players begin simultaneously on different holes, contrasting with the staggered tee times of the PGA Tour. This Westfield tournament is the Individual Championship finale.
The tournament has an extra added bonus for spectators. In addition to the normal team play, the individual champion will be crowned at the end with a tight competition between Chile’s Joaquin Niemann and Spain’s Jon Rahm.
Niemann has struggled with consistency all season, but when his game is on, he’s won five times this year. When it’s not, his best finish is a tie for 12th. A member of the Torque GC team, Neimann has amassed 208.43 points to lead the standings.
Applying pressure is Rahm, captain of the Legion X111 team and a winner just once this season. Rahm’s consistent great play has placed him in the top 10 each week except once, where he placed 12th – his worst finish ever. Rahm stormed from behind last year to take the individual title, and he is the odds-on favorite to do it again this year.
Bryson DeChambeau, captain of the Crushers GC, is a distant third and would really need a miracle to win. He currently has 140.74 points.
This event is next to last in the LIV season, with the season finale in Michigan, August 22-25. That tournament will determine the team title.
Golf hits mainstream TV watchers
When the TV is on, there is more golf. The feel-good Apple TV series Stick made its debut this summer to mixed reviews. The series starring Owen Wilson is loosely based in Fort Wayne and features Hoosier references throughout.
Wilson plays Pryce Cahill, a down-on-his-luck former professional golfer who finds a young golf prodigy in teenage golf sensation Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager) and takes him on the road with his mother Elena (Mariana Trevino) and former bag man and best friend Mitts (Marc Maron).
Riding to amateur golf tournaments in Mitts’ RV, Cahill keeps this comedy rolling even when the plot doesn’t. Although there are many funny parts in the first season, the humor associated with this can be termed situational, subtle, and very tongue-in-cheek.
The show also mixes in good old-fashioned human advice that every golfer should adapt. In the second episode, Cahill reveals the practical but essential advice “Grossweiner’s Law” provides. Invented by fictitious professional golfer Willie Grossweiner, the rule requires focusing on the present and future rather than dwelling on past mistakes. It suggests treating each interaction and situation as a fresh opportunity, much like a golfer focuses on the next shot.
Happy Gilmore 2 shows off stars
Another solid drive this summer is the sequel to Happy Gilmore. The plot revolves around Gilmore (Adam Sandler) returning to the green after retirement to face “The Maxi League,” a team that brings the worst of sports entertainment presentation to the game of golf.
The venerable John Daly and Scottie Scheffler make cameo appearances that steal the show among the sporting and Hollywood stars who put in brief appearances.
Scheffler riffs on the time he was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer, along with charges of criminal mischief and reckless driving, while Daly plays a hard-drinking golf fan temporarily living in Gilmore’s garage and interacting with his family.
The cameo-stuffed cast includes: Bad Bunny as waiter and caddy for Gilmore; Christopher McDonald reviving his role as Shooter McGavin; Ben Stiller as Hal L., a questionable substance use disorder group leader; and Eminem as the son of the disgruntled fan who harassed Gilmore in the original movie. Football player Travis Kelce and golfers Rory McIlroy, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Fred Couples, Nelly Korda, Nancy Lopez, and Bryson DeChambeau also make appearances.
With LIV coming to Westfield or the many iterations of the competition on television and in movies, fans have the best of all worlds available in this the summer of golf.
