{"id":163774,"date":"2025-08-21T12:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T12:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/163774\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T12:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T12:38:11","slug":"what-liv-golfers-said-about-the-cardinal-in-michigan-after-first-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/163774\/","title":{"rendered":"What LIV golfers said about The Cardinal in Michigan after first look"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ian Poulter has some straightforward advice for his fellow LIV Golf players who will tee it up this week at The Cardinal at St. John\u2019s<\/a> in Plymouth in the tour\u2019s season-ending Michigan Team Championship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSkill set is pretty simple: Drive it straight,\u201d Poulter said Wednesday, Aug. 20, after his team, Majesticks GC beat Iron Heads GC in the play-in match to advance to quarterfinals, which begin Friday. \u201cYou need to put it in the fairway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, Poulter had some more observations and praise for The Cardinal, which underwent a massive renovation of the previous layout under prolific Michigan architect Ray Hearn<\/a> and opened in 2024. It’s the first high-end, newly constructed public 18-hole layout in southeast Michigan in more than 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rough is juicy,\u201d said Poulter, who teamed with Henrik Stenson in a 4-and-2 loss to Kevin Na and Jinichiro Kozuma. \u201cObviously yesterday’s rain didn’t help that. We had a couple of shots today which there was no chance to get it on the green from the rough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the fairways are generous enough. I would expect most people to drive it in play. But quite a few long irons into par-3s, long irons into a few par-4s, and then you’ve got a few short par-4s as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE COURSE: <\/strong>The Cardinal, the new golf course at St. John’s, is well worth the price<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, matches often come down to the final strokes on the greens. Poulter said there would be plenty of challenge there, too, but also expected to see more than a few long-range bombs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a decent mix of top end of the bag and bottom end of the bag and you’re going to have to putt well,\u201d he said. \u201cThe greens are pure, hard to read, but again, they’re a pure surface. I would expect guys to be holing plenty of putts.\u201d<\/p>\n

TICKETS: <\/strong>LIV Golf Michigan: How to buy tickets to Plymouth event<\/a><\/p>\n

In the two singles matches, Lee Westwood beat Danny Lee, 1-up, and Sam Horsfield clinched the match with a 1-up win over Yubin Jang after he took the lead with a birdie on the par-4 17th hole.<\/p>\n

The play-in match wasn\u2019t open to the public and with the tournament staff still setting up the course, the scoreboards weren\u2019t working. That made keeping track of other matches a challenge for players. Horsfield asked about his teammates\u2019 status and knew he could clinch the team win.<\/p>\n

Westwood wasn\u2019t as proactive, though it ended up serving him well.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re really just trying to win your point and take care of that,\u201d Westwood said, \u201cwhich wasn’t too difficult out there because the scoreboards weren’t working, so I had no idea what anybody else was doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to ask as soon as my game finished. I wasn’t smart enough like Sam to ask somebody to check. Yeah, it was like being in a little bubble, and that’s probably the best way to play golf, in your own little world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com<\/a> and follow him on X @cmonarrez<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian Poulter has some straightforward advice for his fellow LIV Golf players who will tee it up this…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":163775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[2489,1430,1801,2491,17480,19413,214,50,450,1457,1451,62,1458,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-163774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-competitions","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-international-sports-competitions","12":"tag-liv","13":"tag-liv-golf","14":"tag-michigan","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-overall","17":"tag-overall-positive","18":"tag-positive","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-sports-news","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115066798414215288","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}