If you were caught off guard by this week’s announcement that LIV Golf is bringing its signature team tournament to Metro Detroit in 2025, you weren’t alone. That the tournament is coming to The Cardinal, which only opened in July, made the news even more surprising.
The tournament, LIV’s season finale, is set for Aug. 22-24, on the grounds of the Saint John’s Resort in Plymouth Township. It marks LIV Golf’s first foray into Michigan since the tour launched in 2022, and it marks the first major tournament hosted by The Cardinal, which had dreams of this day coming, but certainly not this soon.
“We certainly wanted it, to be honest,” Eric Djordjevic, the managing director of Saint John’s Resort, told The Detroit News this week. “We didn’t necessarily expect something like this to come out of nowhere. It was always part of the master plan, but for it to happen this quickly, with the launch of The Cardinal, it’s definitely a wonderful gift.
“I mean, it’s obviously a massive announcement, and I think it really just solidifies our position of wanting to be a full-service destination resort that delivers a high-quality, high-energy, one-stop-shop type of experience.”
LIV Golf, the rival of the PGA Tour, is certain to bring attention to the resort, which long has been known for its catering, convention and wedding business, but now is trying to sell its new 18-hole championship golf course as the centerpiece of a destination for out-of-towners and even out-of-staters. The tournament will shine a spotlight on the course, which was built from scratch on the grounds of an old 27-hole municipal-style course.
Of course, the tournament also will shine a spotlight on the resort as a whole, and its welcoming of LIV, which is funded by the Saudis and their Public Investment Fund.
Saudi Arabia has human-rights issues, and Saint John’s Resort, owned by the Pulte family, which bought the resort from the Archdiocese of Detroit in 2021, prides itself on its humanitarian efforts, boasting that its profits all go toward a variety of non-profit charitable causes, locally and globally.
It wouldn’t seem, at least from the outside, that the two entities would fit together. Terms like “blood money” and “sports washing” have been used by many critics to describe the Saudis’ LIV venture, which was formally launched not long after Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, with Saudia Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who also is the head of the PIF, connected to the men who carried out the hit.
But Djordjevic dismissed any such concerns with partnering with LIV, a tour that, it’s worth noting, has an avid fan in former and incoming President Donald Trump, who stayed overnight at Saint John’s on the campaign trail last fall.
“Not necessarily,” Djordjevic said, when asked if there were discussions among the resort’s leadership over optics of partnering with LIV Golf. “We were focused more on the event itself, and the energy that surrounds the events, and obviously putting The Cardinals and (our) humanitarian hotel campaign on a global platform.”
Financial terms of the agreement, even who’s paying whom, weren’t publicly disclosed.
Here’s a look at how Saint John’s landed the LIV Golf team championship, what the tournament will look like, and what it means for the future of the ever-expanding resort.
How did this come together?
Saint John’s officials made it very clear before The Cardinal even opened that the goal was to host major professional golf tournaments, and those officials didn’t waste any time going fishing. The initial goal was to land an LPGA tournament, and it worked with folks from Outlyr, a sports and entertainment special-event production company that works with Michigan’s two other LPGA stops in Grand Rapids and Midland, to try to get a foot in the door. But with Michigan already hosting the Meijer LPGA Classic and Dow Championship, a third annual LPGA stop was a non-starter.
The connection to Outlyr, though, at least opened up a line of communication with officials from LIV, with serious early discussions beginning in October. And Trump, whose Doral resort in Florida will host an LIV tournament for the fourth straight year in 2025, and who is friendly with the Pultes, might’ve provided an assist, though to what extent is not clear. (Bill Pulte, CEO of private-equity firm Pulte Capital Partners, is a donor and an occasional guest at Mar-a-Lago.)
LIV officials made at least four site visits to The Cardinal, and Saint John’s officials received word just before Christmas that it had landed the tournament, one of 14 on LIV’s 2025 schedule, including six in the United States.
What will the course look like?
An LPGA tournament (which remains a goal) seemed like a better fit, because the course is on the shorter side, at just over 7,000 yards. But that wasn’t a major concern for the people from LIV, who like the infrastructure provided by the resort as a big plus, including a 118-room hotel, where players, caddies, families and tour officials can all stay on site.
Still, Djordjevic said, the course will undergo some modifications, starting this spring, including the addition of at least two new tee boxes that could stretch the course out another 200 yards or so. Djordjevic also said the course will be rerouted for the LIV tournament, but he didn’t specify exactly what that would look like. It’s likely the course will be playing to a par 70, down from its standard par 72.
The defense of The Cardinal, designed by West Michigan-based architect Ray Hearn, is the greens, and they’re expected to be rolling fast for the LIV guys, perhaps even approaching 13 on the Stimpmeter.
What does this mean for the resort?
The Cardinal got huge publicity in late 2023 and early 2024, ahead of its opening in July. There was major intrigue about the course, and the numbers showed that, with The Cardinal hosting about 22,000 rounds, way ahead of projections. That was despite the high price tag, which is well over $100 for non-area residents in peak times. (Of note, resort officials plan to hold the prices steady for 2025, though they are considering expanding the non-area discount.) Course conditions drew consistently positive reviews, even those not thrilled with the green fees.
Bringing LIV to town will provide the resort with plenty of eyeballs from around the nation and even the globe, especially now that it is reported the golf tour is close to signing a deal for its tournaments to be broadcast on Fox.
“At the end of the day,” said Djordjevic, “I don’t think we could’ve picked a better event to really get on the stage.”
What will the tournament look like?
LIV Golf is different than its rival, the PGA Tour. For starters, it has smaller fields (54 players, hence the name), shotgun starts and a team component to every tournament. The season finale is all about the team, with $50 million in prize money up for grabs when the LIV golfers come to The Cardinal.
The top three teams in the standings receive first-round byes, while the other 10 teams compete in head-to-head team matches Friday, to move on to Saturday’s semifinals. (The format will be a mix of singles and alternate-shot matches). The top four teams from Saturday’s semifinals advance to Sunday, when team stroke play will determine the champion.
Tickets will go on sale later this year through the LIV Golf website, and if 2024’s finale in Texas is an indication, general-admission passes will be around $40 per day or $100 for the week. Parking will be off-site, with shuttles provided.
Who’s going to be there?
You could make a strong case that the LIV Golf team championship field will be the most star-studded field for a professional golf tournament in Michigan since the 2008 PGA Championship at Oakland Hills.
The Rocket Mortgage Classic, Detroit’s annual PGA Tour stop, gets its fair share of headlines every year, but there’s never been a collection like this. Competing at The Cardinal will be big names like Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Sergio Garcia, Ty Hatton, Joaquin Niemann, Marc Leishman, Patrick Reed, Paul Casey and Lee Westwood, among others. There might even be an Anthony Kim sighting.
It’ll mark the return to Detroit for Mickelson, who played the Rocket once, in 2021, and spent most of the week in a feud with The News over a story that detailed his past gambling ties to a shady Detroit bookie, and DeChambeau, who won the Rocket in 2020.
What can you expect?
The state of Michigan hosts four annual major-pro tour stops, including the Meijer (June 12-15), the Rocket (June 26-29), the Dow (June 26-29) and the Champions Tour’s Ally Challenge in Grand Blanc, which will be played Aug. 22-24, the same three days as the LIV Golf team championship at The Cardinal.
And while all of those four have their fair share of rowdiness from fans, especially at the Rocket’s AREA 3-1-3 and the Dow’s closing hole, LIV Golf is different. It boasts that it’s louder. It encourages fans to go wild. The beer flows, the music blares, and surely that’s part of what drew LIV to Saint John’s, a property plenty vast enough for all the VIP hospitality tents, food and beverage areas, and other activities. The resort has been told to expect 15,000 to 30,000 fans per day, and that number might go higher, potentially much higher, given that there’s been a thaw between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, amid ongoing (albeit, slow) negotiations to bring the PIF and its cash into the PGA Tour.
Golf fans, loyal to a fault one way or another at the start of the rivalry, don’t seem as motivated to take sides anymore.
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
