When planning the LIV Golf schedule, officials from the Saudi-backed professional golf league have specific criteria when determining locations.The Cardinal at Saint John’s Resort in Plymouth Township checked all the boxes. The resort underwent a $50 million renovation in 2023 and opened The Cardinal, the first newly built championship course in metro Detroit in more than 20 years. LIV announced its 2025 schedule on Tuesday, and the Aug. 22-24 team championship will be the tour’s first tournament in Michigan.“We try and find venues that are going to perform well for us, where we think we can attract, good crowds, where we can drive hospitality sales, where we can bring partners in,” Ross Hallett, head of events for LIV, told MLive. “But for us, really importantly, is to find host venues that share our vision for what we want to deliver at LIV Golf and everything that we’re trying to achieve. We’ve had a lot of success with the Midwest locations for our venues, and when we did the analysis of Michigan and Saint John’s in particular, it performed really well. It was a great partnership to move forward with.”Michigan is home to the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit, a PGA event, and and two LPGA tournaments, the Dow Championship in Midland and the Meijer LPGA Classic near Grand Rapids. Hallett said the LIV team championship will be unlike anything the state has hosted.When LIV launched, it initially was viewed as a rival to the PGA Tour and strived to modernize the sport and the experiences for fans. It embraces more of a raucous atmosphere with components such as live DJs playing music during play, and more interactive fan experiences.“We’re a different product (than the PGA),” Hallett said. “It’s a very different experience. It’s a very different style of event. Hopefully LIV will give people that are fans of golf something to come and be part of that they haven’t seen before. Just as importantly for us is attracting the fans that have perhaps never been to a golf event before by what we offer through the fan zone or the music and our concerts. We don’t see ourselves as a competitor. We’re a different product.”Saint John’s was purchased by nonprofit Pulte Family Charitable Foundation from the Archdiocese of Detroit in 2021. The resort has also hosted weddings and conferences, but the goal was to transform into a premier golf destination. Kevin Doyle, Pulte Family Charitable Foundation chief operating officer, said the initial plan was to host an LPGA event, but with two other tournaments in the state, that likely wasn’t feasible. Discussions began with LIV last October and quickly progressed.. The fact that Saint John’s has a 118-room hotel on site where players, caddies and tour officials can stay was appealing.“As we did our overall transformation, this is exactly the sort of thing that we had in mind, which is we want to create a place where you can come for days, a week, and be able to have unbelievably special experiences but also how diverse the experiences we can offer are,” Doyle told MLive. “I wouldn’t say that to host a professional golf tournament was the top priority, but we did have a top priority that we want to host events like what LIV wants to do. “They’re bringing concerts, they’re bringing parties, they’re bringing food and beverage experiences. They like to say, ‘Golf, but louder.’ They have that experience. That type of one-stop shop destination is what we were trying to create. This is an embodiment of that vision that we had.”There are only 14 events on LIV’s schedule, and players’ contracts stipulate they must participate in every tournament. That means the August field will include major champions Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson, Jon Rahm and Dustin Johnson, among others.The team championship is the final event on the 2025 schedule and will feature a different format than its standard 54-hole event. Thirteen teams will vie for $50 million in prize money,. There will be a mix of singles and alternate-shot matches, similar to the Ryder Cup.Doyle said he doesn’t expect many modifications to the course to get it tournament ready. It plays just over 7,000 yards from the back tees, and a few holes may be lengthened. “It is going to be a high energy environment, and our course sets up for that, too,” Doyle said. “We have some long holes, we have some holes that you’re gonna see someone like Bryson try to reach in one. We have a big variety of holes, but we have enough that the players are gonna try to attack and it can create a lot of fun in this sort of match play tournament that they’re setting up to do.”
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