RADIO
The LIV Golf League returns to Australia this week for its LIV Adelaide event at The Grange Golf Club. Last year over 77,000 fans attended the event, making it LIV’s highest attended event of the season. This year the crowd size is expected to surpass last year’s total. LIV Adelaide is quickly becoming LIV’s flagship event with the rowdy Australian crowd and party atmosphere, it should be a must watch this weekend if you are a fan of golf.
Talor Gooch took home the inaugural LIV Adelaide event in 2023, shooting -19. Gooch opened with consecutive -10 rounds of 62, before struggling a bit in round three but still doing enough to win the tournament. It was Gooch’s first of three victories in 2023. Anirban Lahiri, Patrick Reed, Cam Smith, Cameron Tringale and Pat Perez rounded out the rest of the top six, all shooting -15 or better for the week. Expect the winning score to in the high teens again this week.
The event will be played Friday-Sunday and will air on the CW Network, as well as the CW App and LIV Golf Plus. Globally, the event will be broadcast in over 160 international territories, Live and On-Demand, free of charge, via LIV Golf Plus. The event is set to tee off Thursday night EST.
LIV Golf Adelaide Course Breakdown
Below is the official Round 1 scorecard provided by LIV Golf.
| Hole | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Out |
| Par | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 36 |
| Yardage | 443 | 437 | 243 | 357 | 408 | 136 | 514 | 355 | 560 | 3453 |
| Hole | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | In |
| Par | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 36 |
| Yardage | 529 | 418 | 165 | 548 | 173 | 409 | 420 | 454 | 377 | 3493 |
The Grange Golf Club will play as a 6946-yard par-72. The Grange has two courses (East and West) and both will be used as a composite layout for LIV Adelaide. According to LIV Golf’s Mike McCarthy, holes 9-10 and 12-18 of the East Course will provide holes 1-9 of the composite course. The back nine of the West Course will be used for holes 10-18 this week. LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman was involved in the redesign for the East Course in 2012 and Mike Clayton was responsible for the redesign of the West Course.
The infamous hole number 12, known as the Water Hole, will return this year as the party hole. The idea was supposed to replicate the sixteenth hole at the Waste Management where the crowd is extra rowdy and has an opportunity to act as nontraditional golf fans. Chase Koepka made a hole in one on this hole last year and the crowd reaction did not disappoint.
As seen in the yardage and par, The Grange Golf Club is not a long course. The tree lined fairways and strategically placed bunkering throughout are the main defenses of the course. However, the lack of distance allows players to club down off the tee and put more emphasis on accuracy. Birdies are certainly going to be out there this week for players. Last year Talor Gooch opened with two consecutive rounds of 62. It wasn’t just the champion carving this place up through, 14 of the 48 players in the field last year shot a round of 65 or better.
To have a chance to win this week, players are going to have to make birdies. I would anticipate the winner needing multiple rounds of 65 or better, similar to Gooch’s approach to victory last week. While accuracy is more important than distance this week, it is important to understand that simply looking at fairway percentage could be misleading. Many guys will be clubbing down off the tee, leading to a higher percentage of fairways hit.
LIV Golf Betting Odds - Adelaide
Below are the current odds to win LIV Adelaide as posted by BetUs. Odds on different sportsbooks are subject to change, so I would recommend finding the best numbers available. Please note for my picks, I have used the best odds that I was able to find while making my selections in the state of Pennsylvania, so numbers may vary.
Length will not matter this week which means both bombers and plotters will be live to win in Australia. The one thing I will be looking for is birdie makers. Talor Gooch won this event last year at -19 and I imagine the winner will need to get to at least -17 again this year. Birdies are surely out there as noted earlier in the article so I will be looking for golfers who can get hot and go low.
Abraham Ancer +2600 ( FanDuel)
Can Ancer win two out of three LIV events? It certainly feels like a big ask. That said, few are playing better than him right now in the LIV Golf League. Ancer picked up his first LIV victory in Hong Kong, defeating Cam Smith and Paul Casey in a three-man playoff. He followed that up with a T9 finish in Miami, shooting -6. This was more impressive than it looks on paper considering he started off +6 on his front nine on Friday. The 33-year-old battled back valiantly, finishing third on the week in total birdies.
THIS. BIRDIE. 🤯@Abraham_Ancer pic.twitter.com/PAM8ZUATl2
— Fireballs GC (@fireballsgc_) April 17, 2024
Ancer finished T11 at LIV Adelaide in 2023, shooting two of three rounds in the 60s. On top of his LIV Adelaide experience, Ancer has a strong history of Australian Golf. He won the Australian Open in 2018, his first breakthrough win as a professional. He also went 3-1-1 at the Presidents Cup in 2019 at Royal Melbourne and was considered by many to be the International team’s top player. The Mexican took to Instagram this week saying Australia was one of his favorite countries and you have to imagine his golf success there is a big reason why.
Statistically speaking, Ancer has what I am looking for as well. He’s second on the season in driving accuracy and ranks fifth in total birdies. Abe struggled with the putter to start the season but has since snuck into the top ten in putting average. He finished T6 and T7 in putting in his last two starts so it looks like something has clicked on the greens.
Paul Casey +2700 (FanDuel)
Paul Casey has yet to shoot a round over par in 2024. While this week isn’t exactly a grind it out type of test, the stat shows just how consistent Casey’s game has been all season. In five LIV starts, he has just one finish outside of the top fourteen. He ranks third on the year in the LIV Golf League in GIR, ninth in total birdies and sixth in fairway percentage. The putter let him down big time to start the year, but it showed signs of life in Casey’s last start in Miami.
Looking for our third win of the year in Aussie territory this week 👀 pic.twitter.com/sQuV7mPjBm
— Crushers GC (@Crushers_GC) April 22, 2024
Hitting fairways and greens in regulation lead to Casey’s success in Hong Kong where he ultimately lost in a playoff. Still, he finished just 35th on the week in putting. If Casey can replicate the ball striking on another short course in Adelaide and get the putter to do anything, he should be in contention on the weekend. The +2700 number seems more than fair for one of the most consistent players in the league this season.
Patrick Reed +3300 (FanDuel)
Patrick Reed has yet to win a LIV Golf League event, which seems unfathomable given his winning pedigree and the number of high finishes he’s had since joining. That said, this feels like a great spot for Reed to earn his first victory. After a slow start to 2024, the 33-year-old has hit his stride over the past month. He finished T4 on the Asian tour in mid-March, T9 at LIV Miami at the beginning of April and T12 at the Masters the last time he teed it up. He finished tied for third in this event last season, so it feels like we have the perfect combination of recent form and course history working in Reed’s favor this week.
Loved seeing Patrick Reed wearing Duca del Cosma golf shoes last week at The Masters. 👀
The 2018 Masters Champion wore the Dandy in rounds 1, 3, and 4 at Augusta.
Guessing @PReedGolf read some of my Duca reviews. 😁👍 pic.twitter.com/0ISyNq5Bbm
— Pete Pappas (@PGAPappas) April 19, 2024
Reed finished T7 in total birdies in his last LIV start in Miami despite not having one of his best putting weeks. This is a great sign from a ball striking perspective. We all know that when Reed gets going on the greens, he has the ability to turn into one of the hottest putters in the world, if he can continue striking the ball like this and catch up with the putter, it’ll be trouble for the rest of the field.
Graeme McDowell +12000 (FanDuel)
G-Mac all the way down at 120-1 is worth a flyer in my opinion. McDowell is surely on the back end of his career but joining Smash GC in the offseason seems to have revived his game a little bit. In five LIV events this season, McDowell has two top-eight finishes. He recently spoke to the Mirror UK about wanting to get back into major championships. The 44-year-old stated that he intends to go through qualifying to earn a spot into both the US Open and the Open Championship. This tells me that at the very least, he’s grinding with his game and hasn’t mailed it in.
There are certain courses where he simply will not have a chance to win, however, this isn’t one of them. At under 7,000 yards, The Grange Golf Club plays into McDowell’s strengths of fairways and greens. He leads the LIV Golf League in fairway percentage this year, I think the streaky putter will decide the veteran’s fate this week. If he putts like he did in Hong Kong, finishing second in the field, I think McDowell will be a sneaky play this week.
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