Australian golf fans and LIV Golf should be commended for the show they created around the event in Adelaide this weekend. LIV filled a vacuum, bringing top-name pros (Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, and more) to a country that’s too often been neglected by elite golf tours and their most powerful stars. More specifically, LIV went to a part of the country where those names showing up is even more rare. I do not think they popped over to Adelaide around the 2019 Presidents Cup. All that plus national names for home fans to get behind like Cam Smith and Marc Leishman and there was an absolute scene for three days. LIV is still less than a year old, and that they were able to create this, if only for a weekend, is worth recognizing as a real achievement. Australia has been left behind for a handful of unfortunate logistical and economic reasons, though maybe this response shakes up the PGA Tour to try to be more of a presence there and put the “global” back in Global Home.

We can’t just pop LIV for its many amateur-hour flops and mistakes and then ignore its successes, so it’s worth hailing the Adelaide atmosphere. But it does not seem replicable. The vacuum was there for a reason. This can’t happen every weekend; now it’s on to Singapore, and then to the only course in Tulsa that would take them. More importantly, there’s also the matter of the product when you get beyond the big crowds and “Watering Hole” scene and the handful of social media hits (did Chase Koepka really say “I’m HIM!” when he made that ace?) it produced. You still need a golf product to bring them back out, in Australia and especially elsewhere. Talor Gooch up by 10 with 18 holes to play is not it. An overnight CW app stream trying to make sense of the Range Goats and Stingers chances is also not it. Maybe it will hit some weeks when Gooch does not go 62-62 to open up a gulf, but LIV’s format is not producing yet, standing in contrast to the hit rate of the PGA Tour’s inaugural designated events season.

One final, somewhat separate point: this was a great scene generated by the locals and LIV. But to suggest it’s some new form of golf and a revolutionary breakaway from “traditional golf” or something that already exists, as Phil suggested in a tweet, is ridiculous. As an ASU product and local hero in Phoenix, Phil knows better than anyone that the scene in Adelaide is readily available on the PGA Tour in multiple spots, most notably at TPC Scottsdale. So it’s a little silly to suggest this was something new for golf—maybe it was new for LIV Golf.

This piece originally appeared in The Fried Egg newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.