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LIV Golf alters format for season-ending championship
Reuters • August 8th, 2025 3:36 pm
Ripper GC captain Cameron Smith is predicting lots of upsets with the new LIV Golf teams format | Photo: Michael Errey/AAP
LIV Golf has tweaked the format of their season-ending team championship by eliminating first-round byes and introducing a play-in match.
The 13-team league will stage a play-in match on Wednesday of the LIV Golf Team Championship at Saint John's Resort in Plymouth, Michigan, between the teams who sit 12th and 13th in the standings at the conclusion of the regular season.The winner will advance to the quarterfinals.
Meanwhile, there is no first-round bye for the top seeds as in prior years.
"I think you'll see a few teams get knocked out that you maybe wouldn't expect," said Australia's Cameron Smith in a LIV Golf news release. Smith captains the defending team champions, Ripper GC.
Team Ripper - Matt Jones, Marc Leishman, Cameron Smith and Lucas Herbert - are the defending champs | Photo: AP
"More pressure. Each day matters more," Crushers captain Bryson DeChambeau added.
The play-in will be held on August 20, then the remaining 12 teams head to the course on August 22 for the quarter-finals.
For the semi-finals on August 23, six teams will be in the championship bracket and the three winners will move on to the stroke-play finals on August 24.
In other changes to the format, all 48 players from those teams will compete and the captains of the higher-seeded teams will be given the advantage of seeing his opponent's lineup before finalising the matchups.
Legion XIII, captained by Spaniard Jon Rahm, currently lead the team standings ahead of DeChambeau's Crushers in second and Spaniard Sergio Garcia's Fireballs GC in third.
The current bottom two teams are Majesticks GC, captained by Sweden's Henrik Stenson, and Kevin Na's Iron Heads GC.
