Saudi politics bleeds into golfing pageantry as Greg Norman brings LIV fever dream to Adelaide

I n 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.

Famous players are close enough to touch, striding about with chiselled calves, trailed by caddies in tight, tucked-in kit. At the driving ranges and putting greens, fans crane three-deep to see local favourite Cameron Smith along with famous one-name Americans and Brits: Brooks, Bryson, DJ, Phil, Lee, Case, Poults. Richard Bland? Not so much. But on Friday he shot six-under 66. Even a 50-year-old world No 114 can shoot lights out.

There are giant banners with the team names, like mighty heralds of the great houses of Rome (or Hogwarts). People are getting around in branded t-shirts and stiff-billed hats declaring team allegiance to ‘Cleeks’, ‘4 Aces’ and Smith’s ‘Rippers’. Australians, it appears, have bought in, unconcerned that the funding of this great golfing fever dream comes