The LIV Golf League concluded its 2024 season by leaning into its team format, hosting the LIV Golf Team Championship at Maridoe Golf Club outside of Dallas. And to say the event was lucrative is, well, an understatement. A total of $50 million was on the line with the overall winners, Ripper GC, earning $14 million.
As was the case in previous years, the prize money for the final championship of the year was split 60 percent toward the team to cover team expenses and 40 percent toward the players. So here’s how the purse breakdown looks for captain Cameron Smith’s winning squad.
Winning team: $14 million
Team share: $8.4 million (60 percent)
Players share: $1.4 million per player
Similarly, the prize money earned by all other teams will shake out to 60 percent going to the “team” and 40 percent to the players for their week’s work.
The format for the team event at Maridoe was, well, slightly tricky to follow. Friday’s play involved the Nos. 4-13 teams from the season-long standings. The top seeds from those teams chose who they would face in the quarterfinal.
The teams that earned two or more points advanced to Saturday’s semifinals, with the Nos. 1-3 seeds joining in after earning byes. A similar match-play format was used to determine the four winners who were in the running for the title on Sunday, which turned out to be Ripper GC, 4Aces, Iron Heads and Legion XIII.
Interestingly there were some surprising upsets during Friday’s quarterfinals as the two lowest seeded teams, No. 13 Iron Heads (captained by Kevin Na) and No. 12 HyFlyers (captained by Phil Mickelson), upset No. 4 Smash (Brooks Koepka) and No. 5 Torque (Joaquin Niemann), respectively. No seeded team lower than 11th had won in the first two years of the Team Championship. The Iron Heads and HyFlyers are two of the three LIV Golf teams that have never won a tournament.
The upsets then continued on Saturday, with the Iron Heads winning again, this time taking out Crushers GC, the defending team champion captained by Bryson DeChambeau. Also winning on Saturday was Legion XIII (despite the fact its captain and best player, Jon Rahm, sat out because of a severe bout of the flu), Ripper GC (captained by Smith) and the 4Aces (Dustin Johnson’s team that won the inaugural team title in 2022).
On Sunday, all 13 teams played to determine the final outcome. All players competed in stroke play, with all four scores added together to get the team total. The lowest score of the four teams that won Saturday matches played to be the overall winner, with the remaining teams claiming second through fourth place. The losing squads on Saturday played for positions fifth through eighth place, with the losing squads from Friday playing for ninth through 13th place.
Here’s the prize money payouts for each team this week at Maridoe.
TIER 1
Winner: Ripper GC (Smith, Herbert, Jones, Leishman), -11, $14 million total/$1.4 million per player
T-2: 4Aces (Johnson, Reed, Perez, Varner III), -8, $7 million total/$700,000 per player
T-2: Iron Heads (Kozuma, Na, Lee, S.Vincent), -8, $7 million total/$700,000 per player
4: Legion XIII (Hatton, Catlin, Surratt, K.Vincent), -6, $4 million total/$400,000 per player
TIER 2
5: Stinger (Grace, Schwartzel, Oosthuizen, Burmester), -15, $3.25 million total/$325,000 per player
6: Fireballs (Garcia, Ancer, Chacarra, Puig), -14, $3 million total/$300,000 per player
T-7: Crushers (Casey, Lahiri, DeChambeau, Howell III), -2, $2.625 million total/$262,500 per player
T-7: HyFlyers (Steele, Ogletree, Tringale, Mickelson), -2, $2.625 million total/$262,500 per player
TIER 3
9: Majesticks (Horsfield, Poulter, Westwood, Stenson), -5, $2 million total/$200,000 per player
10: Torque (Munoz, Ortiz, Niemann, Pereira), -4, $1.65 million total/$165,000 per player
11: Cleeks (Kaymer, Bland, Samooja, Meronk), -1, $1.3 million total/$130,000 per player
12: Rangegoats (Uihlein, Watson, Pieters, Wolff), +4, $950,000 total/$95,000 per player
13: Smash (McDowell, Gooch, Kokrak, Koepka), +12, $600,000 total/$60,000 per player
Main Image: David Cannon
