cording to Niemann. “When you have a bad day and get frustrated and don’t want to do certain things, it’s one thing when you’re by yourself. It’s different when you’ve already expressed your goals to a group and need to put your word into value.” Personally noticeable for Niemann has been a shift away from loneliness. “When I first came out, it was 28 weeks a year, and sometimes my agent or coach was there, sometimes not. It gets kind of weird.” On LIV, the shotgun start is conducive to team meals and practice sessions, as everyone ar- rives and leaves the course around the same times. Niemann really likes the warmups. “We have four spots on the range, and if not, we’ll take turns watch- ing each other, talking about the course, certain shots, getting each other pumped. The music is playing, it’s incredible. Now when I go to a DP World Tour event, it seems blah, sort of chilling. There’s no question that I play better when I am amped.” THAT LIFE AS A TOUR PRO CAN BE ALIENATING is not a new observation. Hours of lonesome travel interspersed with cutthroat competition has always favoured the psychologically strong. But has it got worse? In a recent article in the Atlantic, writer Derek Thompson dubs ours “The Anti-Social Cen- tury,” and argues that as we’ve become increasingly phone-bound, homebound, steadily building a pen- chant for AI interaction and takeout meals, we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking the convenience of being alone makes us happier than being with other people. Projecting a greater societal ill onto profes- sional golf certainly isn’t a perfect fit – pro golfers are not homebound as they literally live in front of crowds – but they, too, share the habits and behav- iours of our time. Almost any PGA Tour Champions golfer you ask laments the more friendly decades of pro golf before everyone started walking around with their heads buried in their iPhone, or practic- ing and working out with earbuds in. Rahm – whose teammates are Tyrrell Hatton, Tom McKibbin and Caleb Surratt – never holds team meetings or practices. “We have dinners, but everybody knows what he has to do to get into his own headspace to prepare …. I’m there to pick up somebody after a round if needed, but my job is to perform well and be the face to attract partners.” Though Rahm likes to think he is a mentor to Sur- ratt, age 21. “Like a lot of new pros, Caleb was trying to change too many things at once. I tell him to slow down and laugh and see the world as a kid, which is a good lesson for us all.” Rahm says he agonised for weeks over the nam- ing of his team. “The first name we considered was ‘Atlas,’ a Titan who was punished to hold up the sky, but it didn’t feel quite right.” When it dawned theirs would be the 13th team in the league, Rahm’s moth- er reminded him of the comic book series he used to read as a kid, Asterix and Obelix. In one story, Legion XIII is a troop that wages endless war with a small French village endowed with superhuman strength by a wizard. The legionnaires had “crossed
“ASSERTIVE BUT NOT MEAN, IS HOW I THINK THE GUYS WOULD DESCRIBE ME.”
CAMERON SMITH
“I think we have the closest team out here. We’re genuinely four good mates who care about each other and want the best for each other. We have a lot of fun, but we also work really hard,” says Cam- eron Smith, captain of the all-Australian Rippers GC (Marc Leishman, Lucas Herbert, Matt Jones) that won the 2024 LIV Golf team championship. During lulls in the schedule, Smith organises team camps that are three days of playing and two days of practice, usually in Australia or Florida. All four players, four caddies, four swing coaches, two physios, the club manager and his assistant submit to a schedule overseen by Smith, though in his ear more this year is Tony Meyer, High Performance Di- rector at Golf Australia, who Smith just hired. “Getting to train with other good players and compete against each other in training is a big ad- vantage,” says Meyer, who has coached national teams of all age levels across 20 years. “The disad- vantages can be that every player needs to work on something different to develop and training togeth- er can limit this .... Professional team players have significantly more experience and require far less direction as they know what works for them.” “Assertive but not mean, is how I think the guys would describe me,” says Smith, who is at his most vocal leading putting and short-game drills with “meaningful” stakes. “I think Herbie enjoys it, but the other two maybe not so much,” he laughs. The camps don’t come close to replacing the lost com- petitive hours of a PGA Tour schedule, but Smith believes the quality is higher. “There’s more infor- mation being shared. Nobody is holding things close to their chest. Instead of going to dinner and talking about our families and whatever, the conver- sation gets very focused on golf. At night I wonder all the time, what can we do to get better as a team?” Another of the more obviously cohesive teams is Torque GC (Joaquin Niemann, Mito Pereira, Sebastián Muñoz, Carlos Ortiz) as all are youthful and Spanish-speaking. Apart from Muñoz, three share a swing coach in Eduardo Miquel. “We have a group text chat, just the four players, and a larger team chat that has 10 people, and we are always go- ing back and forth to make sure everyone is on the same page,” says Niemann, the captain who fin- ished second to Jon Rahm in the 2024 individual standings. Last season, there was tension when it was perceived Muñoz was bringing a bad attitude to practice rounds. Even world-class golfers are prone to psychological slumps. When the three con- fronted Muñoz, the conversation went very well, ac-
TASKMASTER Cameron Smith regularly organises practice drills with stakes among his team.
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 111
JULY/AUGUST 2025
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