With LIV Golf's New Format, There's No Hiding an Underperforming Player
LAS VEGAS — One thing that differentiates LIV Golf from other professional golf tours is its team aspect. It's ultimately what they hope to hang their hat on in the marketplace of eyeballs and potential sponsors.
Yet, while golf fans love some team events with the Ryder Cup at the top of the list, LIV’s idea of team golf is seemingly lost on most.
However, at LIV’s nascent age, it's trying to adjust the team format in an effort to make it more relevant and interesting.
A significant change came at the beginning of this season with the announcement that all four players' final-round scores would count toward the team total. Previously, three of the four scores counted.
That perhaps sounded like a small change but it forces every player to stay focused for all 18 holes on the final day, making it impossible to hide a player.
Bryson DeChambeau's Crushers GC won the LIV Golf team championship last year and figure to be favorites again with a format counting more scores.
Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images
“I really love it,” said Crushers GC captain Bryson DeChambeau, whose team won the 2023 team title. “Our team is evenly balanced and can take advantage of the change.”
After the second round at LIV Mayakoba, DeChambeau’s team was six shots behind Torque GC in fifth place.
In the final round, DeChambeau and teammate Anirban Lahiri played together and as they made their way through the round, the team made a move up the leaderboard.
The Crushers duo played the final three holes in 4 under and boosted the team to second at 20 under, four shots back of Legion XIII. The team collected $1.5 million for the runner-up.
“We talked about it,” DeChambeau said of his discussions with Lahiri about how playing well at the end could make a difference.
Lahiri shot 67 while DeChambeau and fellow Crushers Paul Casey and Charles Howell III all shot 68.
At the bottom of the 13-team leaderboard was Iron Heads GC, captained by Kevin Na.
He sees the change making it more difficult for his team to compete, suggesting that stacked teams, or the teams with more money behind them, have a distinct advantage over a “small market” team like his.
“I don't think it levels the playing field, honestly, I don't like it,” Na said. “I think making it three out of four was really exciting because when you make all four scores count, it's going to favor the stacked teams.”
Na feels his team (with Jinichiro Kuzuma, Danny Lee and Scott Vincent) is great and, as he says, “can flat-out all play,” but also believes that stacked teams have an advantage.
“I just think it's more exciting when it's three out of four because there's nothing wrong with one guy sitting on the bench where his score doesn't count and three guys playing well and they're rooting for him,” Na said. “I have no problem with that.”
Cleeks GC has been a mishmash of a team since the beginning of LIV with players coming in and out of the lineup, including captain Martin Kaymer, who was on the bench for six months with a torn tendon in his left wrist.
At the start of this season, the two-time major champ is on the mend and feels good about his team which includes Richard Bland, Adrian Meronk and Kalle Samooja. And in this format, he likes the idea of the whole group being able to prove it's the most competitive in the team's brief history.
“I think that is what the team aspect should be, that is what the team is about,” Kaymer said on the eve of LIV Las Vegas.
One of the founding captains in the Saudi-backed league, Kaymer believes that the LIV needs to be more team-oriented and when the talk comes to prize money it would be more exciting for fans if more went to the teams.
“I think we are heading into the right direction,” Kaymer said. “There's a lot of movement going on Sundays, and as I said, this is what a team is about. When you play for Real Madrid or Bayern Munich you cannot say seven players were good and four were sh-t. It doesn't work like that. When it comes down to that, all players should count, and I like that way of playing.”
