A change in format for the first two rounds at this week’s Dallas Team Championship at Maridoe Golf Club should provide an interesting twist as LIV Golf captains decide on their match-play lineups.
Captains are no longer required to play each other in singles for Friday’s quarter-finals and Saturday’s semi-final match-play rounds. In the first two years of the Team Championship, captains were required to match up, limiting the possibilities for the other two matches in their team v team showdown.
Now, captains are allowed to play non-captains or even partner one of their teammates in foursomes. For someone like Ripper GC Captain Cameron Smith, that opens up the potential of playing with Marc Leishman, a partnership that won the PGA Tour’s team event in New Orleans in 2021.
“It’s a good move,” Smith said of the format change. “It gives teams an opportunity to kind of play around with maybe stacking a side or doing something like that.
“It’s way better being able to choose who you pick for matches. It creates a bit more drama.”
Smith won’t have to decide on his lineup until after the quarter-finals, thanks to the first-round bye the Rippers earned by claiming the third seed in the season-long points race. The other two teams with byes are Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers GC, the defending Team Champions and this week’s No 1 seed; and Individual Champion Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII, the expansion team that won a league-best four regular-season titles while earning the No. 2 seed.
On Friday and Saturday, teams seeded 4-13 will compete in head-to-head match-ups, with the higher seeds choosing their opponents. Each of those team match-ups will consist of two singles and one foursomes match, with the team winning two (or all three) matches advancing to the next round.
Sunday’s final round will revert to stroke play, with teams competing in tiers based on their results in the first two days. The Championship tier will consist of the four semi-final winners playing for LIV Golf’s Team Championship; Tier 2 will consist of the four teams defeated in the semi-finals; and Tier 3 will consist of the remaining five teams. The cumulative score of all four players on each team will count.
In the first two years of the Team Championship, HyFlyers GC Captain Phil Mickelson has had the difficult task of facing Smith, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson in singles. Mickelson’s team is seeded 12th and will play Friday but he won’t know the opponent until later this week.
He thinks the HyFlyers, whose roster includes LIV Golf Adelaide winner Brendan Steele along with Cameron Tringale and Andy Ogletree, will benefit from the format change.
“It’s very helpful for our team by having the flexibility to utilize all four players in the best possible way,” said the World Golf Hall of Famer. “Steely and myself play a lot of golf together and we play as partners. We know how to communicate; we know to get the best out of each other. There’s a lot of synergy for us and I think we provide our best alternate-shot format as partners.
“Andy Ogletree, who won the US Amateur, is kind of a quiet, tough competitor. You put him out just on his own and he just fights and is gritty. He’s really, after overcoming some injuries this year, now playing some incredible golf. Having the ability to put he and Camo out there, quiet guys who just like to get out and compete, could give us our best options in singles.”
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