If LIV golf finds a way to make people talk about it for its astronomical purses, the dissident league has also found a way to make people talk about it by establishing a special system to determine the seeds of its end-of-season championship.
First, the golfers will compete for a record purse in the history of golf, ie $50 million, during the end-of-season team championship. The winning team will pocket the sum of $ 16 million, during the tournament which will be played from October 27 to 30, at Trump National Doral in Miami.
Where settlements get interesting, as reported by the network’s Mark Schlabach ESPNit is in the operation to determine the heads of series.
After drafting the players for their teams for the tournament, each captain will participate in a “closest to the hole” style elimination format to order the teams. The top four teams will get a bye to the quarter-finals, while the teams placed between ranks 5 and 12 will have to participate in a qualifying round.
The tag team tournament format was revealed in court Monday during the federal antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour.
“The Team Championship will be played over four days in a knock-out format by hole (Match-Play). The winning team will be declared the “Team Series Champion”, explains section 5.4 of the rules.
“Each team will be seeded from the No. 1 seed to the No. 12 seed for the competition and this ranking will be based on a play-off that will take place after the players are drafted. Each team captain will have one shot to place their ball closest to the hole. »
The captain who places his ball closest to the hole will thus have the honor of seeing his team obtain the first seed, and the other formations will be chained from 2 to 12 according to the proximity of the balls hit by the captains until at the hole.
“It’s not very surprising that they choose something so far-fetched and so unoriginal to try to develop the sport,” a PGA Tour veteran told ESPN tuesday. “It really sucks. It’s so dumb. It’s the XFL. This is not competitive golf. It’s a circus. »
According to information obtained by ESPN via a LIV golf representative, some details are still to be finalized.
