CHASING THE ACES IS ONE THING, BUT CAN ANY TEAM CATCH THEM?

No reason to think they would finish anywhere other than atop the podium. Fait accompli.

“We never thought there was anything that was going to happen other than us winning,” Johnson recalled.

And so it did. LIV Golf’s first team champions.

This week? Eh, not so fast.

Sure, the 4Aces are again the No. 1 seed. Sure, they won twice this season, branching out beyond the U.S. for victories in Australia and the UK. Sure, they remain the team to beat, given their lineup and pedigree. But in a 2023 season that was all about chasing the Aces, several other teams are closing to catching up.

The LIV Golf team competition is no longer the Aces and everyone else. Arguments can be legitimately made for a handful of other teams to supplant the defending champs this week and claim the Team Championship and the $14 million first-place prize.

Even DJ grudgingly accepts that simply showing up in Aces gear (with a new Miami-inspired logo) will not get the job done on the Blue Monster this weekend. “The top six teams are all really solid and have a chance to win,” he said.

Four of those teams will not have to play in Friday’s Quarterfinals thanks to earning the bye. Besides the 4Aces, that includes Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers GC, Joaquin Niemann’s Torque GC and Bubba Watson’s RangeGoats GC.

The highest seeds competing on Friday are South African Stinger GC led by Louis Oosthuizen, and Spanish-speaking Fireballs GC captained by Sergio Garcia. If you feel like extending that contender list to include Cameron Smith’s Ripper GC and Brooks Koepka’s Smash GC, go ahead. Both of those clubs reached the Finals last year as the only teams to play all three rounds.

Of all those chasers, the biggest threat might very well be LIV Golf’s youngest team. Torque has the most victories of any team this season with four, and the lineup is very different than last year’s foursome that was knocked out in the Quarterfinals, Niemann having adding good friends Mito Pereira and Sebastián Muñoz to join with emerging star David Puig.

Their four wins include three-stroke victories in DC and Greenbrier, and five strokes in Andalucia. Torque set a LIV record with a counting score of 49 under in Greenbrier (and had even reached 50 under until a late bogey).

Unlike the other three teams with first-round byes, Torque never benefitted from having the individual champion suppling the tournament’s lowest score. The best points finishes by any Torque player this season was a runner-up by Muñoz in Orlando and a runner-up by Pereira in Greenbrier. Depth became their calling card, even while inconsistent finishes cost them a shot at the top seed.

“Obviously, the Aces are the ones to beat,” Niemann said. “They won it last year. We’ve got to try hard to take the trophy out of their hands.”

Another team singularly focused with catching the Aces this season are the RangeGoats. Watson made the offseason’s best personnel move, with Talor Gooch leaving Johnson’s team to join the Goats. The payoff? Three individual tournament wins and the Individual Champion crown for Gooch, along with the Goats’ first team victory (in Singapore). Add Harold Varner III, the winner in DC, and the RangeGoats have the most successful middle-of-the-order duo in LIV Golf.

No team was as consistent as the RangeGoats this year. They were the only team to finish with top-8 points in every event and their six podium results were exceeded only by the Aces

Watson, who returned to competition this season following knee surgery, has been slow to regain his winning form. Of the top six contenders, Watson is the only team captain with fewer points that everybody else in the lineup.

Depending on how Friday’s quarterfinals play out, Watson could find himself with a difficult Singles captains match on Saturday. The RangeGoats are seeded fourth, which means they’ll have to play the team that doesn’t get selected by the higher seeds. It’s likely Watson will be facing one of these major winners – Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen or Phil Mickelson.

“I'm the weak link right now on our team,” he said. “I've had some good rounds. I've had a couple finishes but Sundays have been a struggle so that's where I have to make the team better. I've got to play better.”

Johnson knows he’ll need to play better too if the Aces want to repeat as champions. Although he won the tournament title in Tulsa, he did not have another podium finish in the season. His final point total of 125 was 67 points less than former teammate Gooch, who supplanted him as Individual Champion.

“Obviously I'd have liked to challenge him a little bit more,” Johnson said of Gooch. “I didn't have the greatest year – but I still did OK.”

Johnson will have the first pick of opponents for the Semifinals, but it won’t be like last year when he faced Cleeks substitute Shergo Al Kurdi, the fill-in for Kaymer.

If form matters, then the hottest teams are the Crushers and Fireballs.

DeChambeau’s team started the season with a nine-stroke victory in Mayakoba on the strength of individual winner Charles Howell III. But DeChambeau didn’t get cranked up until the second half of the year after he switched drivers. He won twice and the Crushers added another team win, along with two runner-up finishes, in the last four tournaments. Their cumulative counting score of 321 under this season was best among all 12 teams.

The Fireballs’ season was even more of a bell curve, with a win in the second event in Tucson and a runner-up in Singapore, then a half-dozen middle-of-the-pack performances before finishing second and first in the final two regular-season tournaments. The Fireballs are seeded sixth and face Majesticks GC on Friday.

“Definitely nice to feel the team is in form going to Miami,” Garcia said. “I feel like the golf course is very challenging. I think it suits us well, too.”

Of course, it suited the 4Aces very well last year. While the road toward a repeat title will be much tougher this week, for now, the target remains on their backs.

“The Aces are the team we are all trying to chase,” Watson said. “We all want that trophy like they have. But everybody has a chance to win. On Saturday, the teams are going to get tighter and tighter, and then on Sunday every ball counts.

“Hopefully I won't throw up on myself.”