DALLAS COUNTY, Texas — This article was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. You can read the original article here.
For Albert Huddleston, LIV Golf's Team Championship event at his Maridoe Golf Club was years in the making.
Huddleston, a billionaire who made his fortune in oil and gas, purchased what was then called the Honors Club in 2014. In the years following, he spent millions upgrading and improving the course in Carrollton with a goal of luring a major event like the U.S. Open, PGA Championship or the Byron Nelson tournament.
Maridoe hosted more tournaments than the rest of the world combined during the pandemic, according to the Dallas Morning News. Tournaments the club has hosted have included the 2019 Trans-Mississippi Amateur, the 2020 Southern Amateur, East-West Matches and the USGA Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship in 2021.
When LIV Golf formed in 2021 to rival the PGA Tour, it created more opportunities for Huddleston to bring a big event to Maridoe. That vision became reality during the three-day team championship Sept. 20-22, the first LIV event to take place in the golf-rich Dallas-Fort Worth region.
Huddleston declined to disclose how much he has invested in Maridoe and said he doesn't think about the impact of the LIV event in terms of dollars. Instead, he looks at it more in "human terms" and said he sees golf as a "catalyst" for bringing people together.
"I don't think about the economics," Huddleston said. "The economics are a byproduct of hosting something valuable. I think golf is valuable. Golf is special. It builds character, integrity, value and entertainment."
"It's important to understand that when you do something well and you attract locally and regionally and internationally, the economic engine and benefits of that is really a sidebar," he said. "It is an inadvertent outcome of doing something wonderful that people enjoy and are attracted to and want to travel to and spend their hard-earned money maintaining themselves."
LIV does not come without controversy. The upstart men's golf circuit has drawn criticism because of its financial backing from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. There also was initially bad blood between LIV and the PGA Tour, though tempers have appeared to simmer since the PGA announced in June 2023 an intention to accept an investment deal with the Saudi Public Investment Fund. LIV and the PGA are still negotiating terms of a deal more than a year later.
Huddleston, described by D Magazine as "eccentric," didn't let the controversy around LIV stop him from doing a deal with the tour. He likes LIV's fan-friendly experience and what it has done to try and grow interest in golf. He also sees LIV as similar to what Lamar Hunt did when he created the AFL in the 1960s to compete with the NFL. Huddleston's wife, Mary, is Hunt's niece.
"There are aspects of golf that's more like watching black and white television," Huddleston said. "LIV, to me, is more like watching a color show, color television."
LIV's controversial backing and the hot Texas weather didn't stop people from attending the event. LIV did not release attendance figures but the tournament drew thousands of people each day with fans lining the fairways and surrounding tee boxes and greens to catch glimpses of their favorite players.
The 52-player field featured stars including Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Brooks Koepka and local favorite Bryson DeChambeau, a Southern Methodist University graduate who still lives in DFW.
Ripper GC — an all-Australian foursome consisting of Cameron Smith, Lucas Herbert, Marc Leishman and Matt Jones — took home the victory at the LIV Golf Dallas Team Championship on Sunday.
Lucas Herbert praised Maridoe, saying the course "played amazing."
"I think it was a great venue for the Team Championship," Herbert said. "Some really good pins there for the match play over the first two days and some great Greenbrier complexes, as well. ... Really enjoyed coming to Texas. I feel like [Marc Leishman] and I would have felt at home with a very dry heat and quite windy, so we really enjoyed it, and obviously sitting up here celebrating is probably proof of that."
Smith also praised Maridoe and said he always enjoys playing in Texas. Like Herbert, he said the conditions made him feel like he was playing back home in Australia.
"Probably the greens had a little bit different grasses, but other than that, it was exactly like home," Smith said. "You're hitting different shots. You're hitting different shapes. It was windy like home. It was hot. Yeah, there were a lot of things coming into the week that we liked, and it was good to get it done."
