There’s rarely been a time in the past decade when Marc Leishman has been able to watch local footy in Warrnambool during the Aussie winter.
The week-to-week of the PGA Tour demanded he play, travel, play to make money and retain playing status and fight for world rankings points that ensured he could play again and make money again and keep his playing status.
It was the golfing world’s hamster wheel and while the genial Aussie kept his legs moving, for the most part happily as he maintained a place in the game’s upper echelons, the chance to jump off, and take a risk that had implications beyond his sphere of control, has already reaped significant enough rewards for a near-permanent smile.
LIV Golf Adelaide to feature Party Hole | 01:30
Leishman sat on a couch at the back of the driving range at the Orange County National Golf in Orlando, Florida, yucking it up with fellow Aussies and “Ripper GC” teammates Cam Smith, Matt Jones and Jed Morgan at LIV Golf’s third event for 2023, at ease with his decision to join Greg Norman’s breakaway tour.
The content in his voice was clear, any political ramifications, be it the fallout with the PGA Tour, the resultant divide LIV has created in world golf, and the actual political ramifications of taking money from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund which is the billion-dollar backed for LIV, far from Leishman’s thoughts.
His palpable delight at being a week or two away from a mid-year return to Australia, for the LIV event in Adelaide, and the chance to get home to Warrnambool in country Victoria to soak in some footy, having missed the chance to see his beloved Richmond Tigers in action, was evident knowing he was doing something that, as a PGA Tour player, he wouldn’t get the opportunity to do.
He even shrugged his shoulders when it was pointed out his LIV move meant missing the first major of 2023, the Masters, breaking a run of 30-straight majors for Leishman, who wouldn’t have qualified this year anyway.
The LIV war may have engulfed the golf world, but for Leishman and his Aussie teammates, who even did a pre-season camp together in Dubai, which was a first for Leishman, it’s a war being fought by others because they are living their best lives.
“I really enjoyed my time on the PGA Tour and it was a really good time for a change for me just to be able to you know, with three young kids to be able to spend more time with them and more time in Australia is going down there and in a couple of weeks,” Leishman said.
“Off the course, it‘s amazing. Spending a lot of time with boys and a lot less eating alone and all that sort of thing.
“I’ve got no regrets and certainly very happy where I am.”
The “no regrets” theme rings loudest for Smith, the reigning British Open champ and a LIV recruit even the rebel league’s CEO, Greg Norman, conceded blew him away.
Smith, who won his first LIV title at his second start in 2022, arguably gave up the most by joining the breakaway league, a fact which stood out when he was unable to defend his title at The Players Championship this year, on a course he loves, not 10 minutes from his home in Florida.
His absence was a major talking point that week, but he spent the Sunday playing with mates at a nearby course, for cash. although he conceded it was one of the tournament’s he’ll “miss”.
But Smith’s lack of regret, potentially helped by the reported $140 million he received for joining LIV, has been strengthened by being part of something new, and historic.
He’s not just a golfer at LIV, he’s the captain of “Ripper GC”, and gets to express his leadership in ways he never could as a lone-operator on the PGA Tour.
The Queenslander even organised a pre-season camp in Dubai for his teammates, something that would never have happened before.
“My trainer lives near me in Jacksonville and the end of last year and we were just playing around with it and we said it might be a good idea to get the boys together,” Smith said of the camp, which happened after he spent a lengthy off-season in Australia, a stint which included winning the Australian PGA, and enjoying that win, a lot.
“One, because we all had a massive kind of off-season, most of us spent a lot of time in Australia and that generally means not much work’s been done. And then we just wanted to get everyone together. Jed (Morgan) was the new team member. So just kind of get the group going.
“And yeah, we had heaps of fun. We did a lot of work. And I think it was definitely worth it. It definitely got everyone kind of back on their toes and back in the right direction.”
Norman said the team aspect was one of the major reasons players like Smith made the move, and the “health and wellness” of being surrounded by teammates couldn’t be understated, as opposed to the “lonely” world on the PGA Tour.
“What surprised me is how quickly the players wanted to be on the team,” he said.
“The Aussie guys, you get, most of us athletes go on playing some team sports. In the world of golf, you‘re in your cocoon, and that’s it. You may have a caddie, you may have your manager you may have your wife or your spouse go with you to Europe. It’s a very lonely world out there.
“And for me now to see photographs sent to me by the rippers or by Smash or anybody when you see this a the teams are having dinner night or the teams are working out together Hey, the team done this I never expected that to get to that quickly.”
Smith has jumped on the team aspect of golf at every opportunity too. He won the PGA Tour’s only team event, the Zurich Classic, twice, once with Leishman, who he also partnered at the World Cup in Melbourne in 2018.
He also yearned to play on the Presidents Cup team, which he did in 2019, but can’t anymore.
The “Rippers” aren’t a team in name only either, which Smith said made the whole LIV environment an “unreal” one.
“You know, when we‘re here at the golf course we’d like shadows, we don’t leave each other’s side, other than playing the golf,” he said.
“I definitely don‘t regret anything that I’ve done. This is unreal out here.”
