By Matt Smith
The players have barely caught their collective breath after Eugenio Chacarra’s historic victory in Bangkok, but already eyes have turned to Saudi Arabia as the LIV Golf inaugural season reaches its finale.

The season-long Individual Championship winner shall be confirmed at Royal Greens on Sunday — with Dustin Johnson uncatchable after Branden Grace’s sad withdrawal from the lead in Bangkok — while the all-important seedings will be decided for the Team Championship showdown in Miami at the end of the month.

With Chicarra and his Fireballs teammates (Sergio Garcia, Abraham Ancer, Carloz Ortiz) dominating the team leaderboard at Stonehill in Thailand to shoot a collective — and staggering — 45-under over three rounds, they ended the four-tournament winning streak by Johnson’s 4 Aces and thrust themselves into the top-four spots.

The season-long points race for each four-man team determine their seeding for the knock-out finale over three days from October 28-30 at Trump National Doral Miami, with the top four earning a bye from Day 1 while the best of the rest go head-to-head.

The will be massive attention paid to the team leaderboard in Jeddah as those seedings are finalised and every player can make a difference, regardless of their spot on the individual leaderboard.

Fireballs look like the ones to watch in Saudi after producing all nine counting scores in the 60s last time out, and winning by seven clear shots from nearest rivals Crushers. Cleeks made up the podium spots in Bangkok, finishing third by one shot over Iron Heads.

“It’s an amazing week,” Garcia said after the Stonehill triumph. “Four Aces were coming off four wins in a row, so we knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. But we had a lot of faith in each other We’ve been playing really, really well, and been quite close a couple of times.

“We felt like we just needed to click a little bit here and there, and that was going to make the difference — and that’s what happened this week.”

TEAM LEADERBOARD

  • In Bangkok and Jeddah, the best three scores in all rounds will combine to produce the team score. The previous counting-score format was 2-2-3.
  • There is a $50 million purse on the line in Miami .
  • Teams have received points for their finishes in each event, and the top four teams in the points standings after next week’s event in Jeddah receive Day 1 byes in Miami.

The breakdown in points is as follows:
1st 32 points
2nd 24
3rd 16
4th 12
5th 8
6th 4
7th 2
8th 1

Here are the standings ahead of the final race for seedings in Jeddah:
4 Aces 140 points
Crushers 80
Stinger 72
Fireballs 69
Majesticks 59
Torque 34
Iron Heads 32
Smash 30
Hy Flyers 29
Cleeks 20
Punch 16
Niblicks 13

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