How does the LIV Golf Team Championship work?
What is the LIV Golf Team Championship? Who will be competing? And how will a winner be determined? Let’s take a look as the breakaway league reaches its lucrative season finale…
What is the LIV Golf Team Championship?
After months of controversy, roster changes, and a whole lot of noise, the inaugural LIV Golf season will now come to a conclusion at the 2023 Team Championship.
Following its first seven regular season events, all 12 teams and 48 players will tee up at Trump National Doral in Miami between October 28-30.
Consisting of both match play and stroke play, the three-day LIV Golf Team Championship will see each team of four compete for a record-breaking $50 million purse. The winning team will receive $16 million, while the the 12th-place side will still bank $1 million.
How the LIV Golf Team Championship works
During the regular season, teams were awarded points based on their finish at each event. The accumulation of points then determined each team’s seed entering the Team Championship. Here are the seedings following the seven events:
1st: 4 Aces GC (Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Talor Gooch, Pat Perez)
2nd: Crushers GC (Bryson DeChambeau, Paul Casey, Anirban Lahiri, Charles Howell III)
3rd: Fireballs GC (Sergio Garcia, Carlos Ortiz, Abraham Ancer, Eugenio Chacarra-Lopez)
4th: Stinger GC (Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel, Branden Grace, Hennie Du Plessis)
5th: Smash GC (Brooks Koepka, Chase Koepka, Peter Uihlein, Jason Kokrak)
6th: Majesticks GC (Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, Henrik Stenson, Sam Horsfield)
7th: Torque GC (Joaquin Niemann, Scott Vincent, Adrian Otaegui, Hideto Tanihara)
8th: Hyflyers GC (Phil Mickelson, Bernd Wiesberger, Matthew Wolff, Cameron Tringale)
9th: Iron Heads GC (Kevin Na, Sihwan Kim, Sadom Kaewkanjana, Phachara Khongwatmai)
10th: Gleeks GC (Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell, Laurie Canter, Richard Bland)
11th: Punch GC (Cameron Smith, Marc Leishman, Matt Jones, Wade Ormsby)
12th: Niblicks GC (Harold Varner III, Hudson Swafford, James Piot, Turk Pettit)
The format for the three-day season-ending Team Championship is then as followed:
Quarter-finals (Friday 28 October)
– Teams seeded 1-4 will receive a bye
– Teams seeded 5-12 will compete in head-to-head match play competitions
– The highest-ranked teams select their opponents
– All 32 players amongst those eight teams will compete simultaneously in a shotgun start
– For each head-to-head team match-up, three matches will take place: two singles matches and one alternate-shot (foursomes) match
– Matches will be played until a winner is determined; there will be no ties. Each match winner receives one point
– Teams earning two points will advance to Saturday’s semi finals
Semi finals (Saturday 29 October)
– Teams seeded 1-4 will join the winning four teams from Friday for another day of head-to-head team match play
– Highest-ranked teams select their opponents
– All 32 players amongst those eight teams will compete simultaneously in a shotgun start
– Teams compete in the same format as Friday: two singles matches and one alternate-shot (foursomes) match, with each match winner receiving one point
– Matches will be played until a winner is determined; there will be no ties
– The four teams earning two points will advance to the Team Championship
Team Championship (Sunday 30 October)
– The four winning teams will compete in a shotgun-start round of stroke play
– All 16 players will compete in twosomes, with team captains playing together
– All four scores count towards the team’s score
– At the end of Sunday’s round, the squad with the lowest team score is the LIV Golf Invitational Series Team Champion
George Cooper
A golf fanatic his entire life, George Cooper is NCG's man for all goings-on at the top level of the game, whether it's the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, LPGA or LIV Golf. He also looks after NCG's Twitter and Facebook accounts. George is a member of Woburn, but is not friends with Ian Poulter.
