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We’ve reached the end of the LIV Golf season. 13 events have been played and there’s one to go. This week, 32 of LIV Golf’s finest talents will congregate at Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami, where the LIV Golf Team Championship will take place.
It’s team golf this week, so the format of this competition is slightly different from typical LIV Golf events. 12 teams will go head-to-head over three days, and only one team can come out on top. Who will it be?
How does the LIV Golf Team Championship work?
Contents
Right, let’s take a look at the format ahead of this competition. For starters, this tournament will be all about teams matching up head-to-head. So there will be a quarter-finals stage that takes place first, before the eight winning quarter-finalists face off in a semi-final set up, which will decide the four teams to eventually play off against each other to determine who finishes first, second, third and fourth. The four losing teams from the semi-finals will play off to decide who finished fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth, while the losing quarter finalists will play against each other to determine which teams finish in the bottom four spots.
On the first day of the tournament, the top four teams according to seeds (based on seasonal performances up until this point) receive a bye. In other words, they’re straight through to the next stage of the competition. The next eight teams will compete in head-to-head match-play competition, with the highest ranking teams selecting their opponents.
All 32 players involved on day one will compete at the same time, and for each head-to-head match-up, three matches will take place, two singles matches and one alternate-shot match, otherwise known as foursomes. All matches will be played until a winner is determined. Those teams that earn two points from the first day’s play will advance to the semifinals on Saturday.
The same format will follow on Saturday with the four teams claiming two points to progress to Sunday’s finals. The four teams through to the finals will compete under the same conditions, as will the other eight teams, but they will not be competing for a chance to be crowned the outright winners.
LIV Golf Team Championship betting odds
Here’s how the early betting stands ahead of this LIV Golf seasonal climax:
4 Aces – 7/2 (4.50)
Crushers – 4/1 (5.00)
RangeGoats – 9/2 (5.50)
Torque – 5/1 (6.00)
Stinger – 9/1 (10.00)
Fire Balls – 11/1 (12.00)
Ripper – 16/1 (17.00)
Smash – 16/1 (17.00)
Majesticks – 25/1 (26.00)
Cleeks – 28/1 (29.00)
Hy Flyers – 33/1 (34.00)
Iron Heads – 40/1 (41.00)
Best prices taken from a variety of top bookmakers. All odds correct at time of writing.
LIV Golf Team Championship betting odds tips and predictions
Ahead of the action in Miami this week, it’s time to hit the form book and see where the best bets lie. Let’s get into it.
Torque to Win Outright @ 5/1 (6.00)
As we can see from the betting, 4Aces are well fancied, and why not, as they have both Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed on side, but we shouldn’t forget that this is a 4Aces side that no longer has Talor Gooch, who happens to be the number one ranked player in LIV Golf this season, and that’s a blow. No disrespect to Pat Perez, but the veteran simply doesn’t measure up and that could prove costly.
With two top-ten ranked players according to the individual LIV Golf rankings, Crushers are not a team to take lightly. Bryson DeChambeau’s men are also very well respected in the betting, but they’ll need Paul Casey to be at his best and he hasn’t really fired in recent weeks, so I’m not convinced that they ought to be as short as they are, especially with Charles Howell looking like something of a dead-weight. Sorry Charles. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to bite me.
At 5/1, I really like the look of Torque. This young team has no obvious weak points, while in Mito Pereira, they have a player who is highly ranked individually in LIV Golf this year, and who is currently the number one player in hitting greens in regulation, which is not something to ignore. They also have the very dependable Joaquin Niemann, who can go toe-to-toe with anybody from tee-to-green. The Chilean also has two top-ten finishes in his last three events. Making up the team is Sebastian Munoz, who often goes under the radar but who is another very solid player, one who is currently ranked in a very respectable 11th in the LIV Golf individual standings. Munoz has also been in solid form of late finishing fourth at the LIV event in Chicago last month, while the fourth player on the team, youngster David Puig, comes into this event off the back of a recent win on the Asian Tour, while he showed his qualities at this level when finishing third at LIV Golf Greenbrier back in August too.
In terms of team stats, these guys, who will of course go straight into the semis, look good too, ticking lots of boxes as they currently rank inside the top three for key stats such as birdies, eagles and greens in regulation, while they are the number one team in LIV Golf right now when it comes to driving distance, which could be a factor here.
When you put all the positives together, there seem be very few negatives to this Torque team, which to my eyes, clearly has a lack of obvious weak points, which cannot be said for many other teams this week, so for that reason, I’m siding with the Latin players light up the Miami venue and come out on top.
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