LIV Golfers on upgrade this week to Augusta National

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Dustin Johnson didn’t bother to sugarcoat the difference between Orange Country National’s Crooked Cat Course, the site of last week’s LIV Orlando event, and Augusta National Golf Club, site of this week’s 87^th Masters.

“I don’t think you could have those in the same sentence, other than I played there last week and I’m playing here this week,” Johnson said.

They do both have National in their name but that’s about where the similarities end. Orange County National, a 36-hole public facility in Winter Garden, Florida, ranks No. 20 in Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list in Florida, which is two spots behind the second course at TPC Sawgrass. Augusta National ranks third in the Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list. To make matters worse for LIV golfers, Crooked Cat, which has hosted PGA Tour Q-School in the past, was looking pretty scruffy last weekend for the likes of Johnson, Phil Mickelson and 54-hole tournament winner Brooks Koepka.

“A golf course that potentially wasn’t ready for us,” is how Graeme McDowell delicately put it. “Aesthetically not very pleasing.”

Sources tell Golfweek that Isleworth Golf Club, in the Orlando town of Windermere and where Tiger Woods once lived and LIV member Charles Howell III is a longtime resident, had agreed to host the Orlando LIV stop but pulled the plug and Crooked Cat stepped in as a late replacement. (Isleworth was never officially announced as a tournament site by LIV. It is a sister property with Lake Nona, where LIV golfers McDowell, Ian Poulter and Henrik Stenson all call home.)

“Some places don’t want us,” Harold Varner III. “This is a great place, great layout, it’s just not in the best of shape right now. That’s going to take time to get courses that accept LIV. Some people are gun shy about sponsoring it because you don’t want to mess up relationships that existed before.”

But Johnson, the 2020 Masters winner, isn’t too worried about the quality of the course he played last weekend ahead of playing arguably the best-manicured course with some of the fastest greens in the country. He was just happy to get some reps before he tries to win a second Green Jacket.

“I still play golf for a living. I’m here at the Masters and enjoying this week,” Johnson said. “It’s still golf. So it doesn’t matter where you play at.”