The final day of the inaugural LIV Golf season will feature 4 Aces GC, Stinger GC, Smash GC and Punch GC in a stroke-play shoot-out to decide the LIV Golf Team Championship on Sunday at Trump National Doral, Miami, US.
The four remaining teams were determined on a tense Saturday, in which seven of the 12 semi-finals matches went the distance, including two that required extra holes.
Brooks Koepka’s Smash GC, winners of the team title two weeks ago in Jeddah, were the only team to sweep all three matches in beating Majesticks GC. The other results included Cameron Smith’s Punch GC beating Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs GC, despite Garcia knocking off Smith in their singles match, Dustin Johnson’s 4 Aces GC getting tested before beating a gritty Cleeks GC team playing without injured captain Martin Kaymer and Stinger GC beating Crushers GC in a three-match set that required 61 holes, including captain Louis Oosthuizen’s decisive victory over Crushers captain Bryson DeChambeau on the 23rd match hole.
The four surviving teams will now switch from match play to stroke play for Sunday’s Championship round. For the only time this season, all four individual scores will count toward the team score. The team with the lowest score will share the $16 million first prize from the historic $50 million purse.
“It’s the first LIV Team Championship,” said Johnson, who already has claimed the Individual Champion title this season. “It’s kind of the first year of this and I think it’s gone really well and it just kind of sets up for things to come. I think it would be amazing and it’s something that we all really want to win.”
Sunday’s Championship round will include twosomes from different teams, with the Captains paired. Johnson and Smith will be in one twosome going off the first hole, while Oosthuizen and Koepka will be in the other twosome going off the 10th hole. But captains’ groups will start at 12.25pm, 10 minutes later than the rest of the groups.
Teams in the LIV Golf Team Championship Shootout (Seed Numbers in brackets):
4 Aces GC (1): Dustin Johnson (captain), Patrick Reed, Tailor Gooch and Pat Perez
Stinger GC (4): Louis Oosthuizen (captain), Charl Schwartzel, Branden Grace and Hennie du Plessis
Smash GC (5): Brooks Koepka (captain), Jason Kokrak, Peter U
Punch GC (11): Cameron Smith (captain), Marc Leishman, Matt Jones and Wade Ormsby
