LIV Golf Changes Format of Season-Ending Team Championship

The bottom two teams in the 13-team league will compete in a play-in match with the loser going home, then 12 teams will battle for a $14 million first prize.

Bryson DeChambeau's Crushers figure to be in the mix for the team championship. / Reuters via Imagn Images

With two weeks until its season-ending Team Championship, the LIV Golf League on Thursday announced a format change that will see a play-in match and teams no longer receiving byes.

The $50 million tournament, which will conclude LIV’s fourth season, is Aug. 22-24 in Plymouth, Mich. It will feature a Wednesday play-in match between the 12th- and 13th-seeded teams followed by all of the remaining teams competing at match play on Friday and Saturday followed by a Sunday stroke-play finish.

Previously, there had been byes for the first four teams.

The Friday matches will see teams square off with two singles matches and one foursomes match with each being worth one point and the winning team being the one to secure two points.

The six winning teams advance to Saturday’s Championship bracket but the six losing teams are not eliminated and will instead play in the Rankings bracket with three matches taking place as they did Friday.

The three winning teams advance to Sunday’s final, which is stroke play and uses the combined scores of all four players on a team. The other teams will compete for spots four through six, seven through nine and 10 through 12 depending on how far they advanced the previous days.

The winning team gets $14 million from the purse and all teams are paid.

LIV Golf, which is playing this week in Chicago, concludes its individual season next week in Indianapolis, where seeding for the team championship will occur based on season-long standings.

Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII leads the team standings with Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers in second. Ripper GC, captained by Cam Smith, won the team championship last year.