The Australian team had led by six shots but the South Africans drew level at 53-under in the four-man cumulative scoring system.

The play-off is a two-ball aggregate, with Cam Smith and Marc Leishman taking on Louis Oosthuizen and Dean Burmester. The people follow them down 18 like extras after ‘The Messiah’ in The Life of Brian. There are multitudes. There are people atop the commentary box.  

All four players make par on the first try – the Rippers from their very bottoms. On the second try Lieshman stiffs it, Smith spins back off the front and the two South Africans – Burmester heckled so poorly that he told a punter to “shut the f*** up – went long and nudged their balls against each other in the back bunker.  

The Stingers make 10 between them. Ripper make nine.

And there is much rejoicing.  

LIV Adelaide has drawn them in again. While it’s not wholly embraced by some sections of ‘Old Golf’ and traditional media – and it’s ridiculed and disdained by the odd-bird denizens of anti-social media – it’s been verily consumed by the sports-watching South Australian rank-and-file. It’s like a popular movement.

The corporate hospitality is sold out. Ripper GC merchandise is sold out. Crowds are thick at every hole. People who say ‘Who cares?’ cannot have been to Adelaide to watch LIV Adelaide. They simply cannot have.

*

Back on the first tee at 11:05am and the Great White Shark Greg Norman strides onto the tee-box, a familiar figure, a presence, like Walt Disney turning up at Disney World. There are louder cheers when the man of the hour, Smith, enters the reverse-amphitheatre and prepares to do his thing.

The crowd is thick, noisy; there’s an energy to it. That 40,000 people at an Australian golf tournament – numbers you’d find at an Australian Open with Norman and/or Tiger Woods – doesn’t glean greater attention from traditional Australian sports media is curious.

Perhaps it’s too new, without legacy. Perhaps the Saudi funding remains a taint. Perhaps sports editors just don’t know how to contextualise it – is it a sports event? A party? An exhibition?

Perhaps all the above.

Yet if politicians judge protest numbers to public sentiment on a ratio of 1/100 – meaning  that if 10,000 people protest something then one million people – call them ‘voters’ – think the same thing – then 100,000-plus people turning up at LIV Adelaide in the flesh must mean a certain number would care enough to consume media about it.

Greg Norman. PHOTO: Getty Images

Could be wrong. But there haven’t been crowds like this since the Shark strode the fairways in anger. It’s a 2011 and 2019 President’s Cup at Royal Melbourne crowd. But with music and beer and a certain raucous – and towards the end nudging loose – energy among the punters.

The shout-outs for Smith are guttural. It’s for the man because they like him. It’s also for the Australia that Smith represents. As HMS Surprise was a floating piece of England in Master & Commander. In this golfing fever dream the maroon polo shirts of the Ripper GC franchise is representative of Australia.

Smith begins his round on -11, two back from leader Brendan Steele who will finish 18-under and win, and be nearly completely forgotten.

Cameron Smith shot 70 on day three and rolled in the play-off-winning putt. PHOTO: Getty Images

After two pars the nor-west breeze picks up and Smith is faced with a genuine 80-foot putt on the third. He takes three to get down. On four and five, putts slide by. 

On the par-3 sixth there is the weak, not-shanked-but-may-as-well-have-been, low-fading wedge that saw Smith cut from the PGA Championship at Royal Queensland. He does make a sand-save, though. He also makes one on seven for birdie.

Does the charge start now?

It does not. He pars the easy-ish eighth. On nine he tugs his tee-shot into the fairway trap and slaps the face of his driver, as if to say ‘Bad driver!’ He makes a par on the par-5 and sits six back of Steele with nine to play. 

Ripper GC celebrate good times. PHOTO: Getty Images

Yet with Smith’s team-mates Leishman (65), Lucas Herbert (65) and Matt Jones (68) going low, the Ripper team leads by six with three holes to play.

But things happen fast when four scores count. 

Branden Grace makes an eagle, Charl Schwartzel rolls in a bomb. Smith three-putts 18. Jones makes a par. Louis Oosthuizen rolls in a five-footer to square it up 53-under.

And back up 18 they go. 

And thousands go with them.