MIDSEASON REVIEW: TRENDS, NUMBERS, SURPRISES AND SUPERLATIVES
We've reached the halfway point of the 2024 LIV Golf League season. Here's an overview of what we've seen.
TRENDS
PLENTY OF PLAYOFFS
Seven tournaments into the season and there have already been four playoffs – including LIV Golf’s first team playoff in Adelaide. It took 28 tournaments, but it was worth the wait, as the hometown Ripper GC were caught by a hard-charging Stinger GC in the last few holes of regulation, survived the first playoff hole when the South Africans had two birdie putts to win, and then thrilled their 30,000-plus Aussie fans in attendance that final day with a victory on the second playoff hole.
The season-opening playoff in Mayakoba was equally compelling, as Torque GC Captain Joaquin Niemann and Fireballs GC Captain Sergio Garcia battled it out for four holes in the looming darkness, with Niemann sinking the winning putt from the fringe.
In Hong Kong, the Fireballs’ Abraham Ancer beat Ripper Captain Cameron Smith and Crushers GC’s Paul Casey in a three-man playoff, and in the next event in Miami, Stinger GC’s Dean Burmester outlasted Garcia in a two-hole playoff.
Perhaps the second half will see LIV Golf’s first double playoff, with both the individual and team titles going to extra holes.
DOUBLE THE PLEASURE
Winning has been happening in twos this season.
Already, three teams have won twice – Crushers GC in Jeddah and Hong Kong, Legion XIII in Mayakoba and Miami, and Ripper GC in Adelaide and Singapore. Unsurprisingly, those are the three teams atop the season-long team standings, with the Crushers and Rippers winning in back-to-back starts.
Meanwhile, Niemann leads the Individual standings thanks to his two wins in Mayakoba and Jeddah. He’ll continue to lead at least through the next tournament in Houston unless he struggles for points and Jon Rahm wins for the first time in LIV Golf.
A year ago, four teams won multiple times (including Torque, which had four wins, and Crushers, which won three times including the Team Championship) and four players won multiple times (including Talor Gooch, who posted three wins en route to the 2023 Individual Championship).
I’LL SECOND THAT
Speaking of twos … captains Louis Oosthuizen (Stinger GC), Sergio Garcia (Fireballs GC) and Cameron Smith (Ripper GC) each have two runner-up finishes in the first half of the season.
Both of Garcia’s second-place results came via playoff losses, to Niemann in Mayakoba and Burmester in Miami. The Spanish legend has now been involved in three of nine individual playoffs in LIV Golf history.
Smith was involved in the three-man playoff in Hong Kong and also tied for second last week in Singapore.
Oosthuizen tied for second with teammate Charl Schwartzel in Jeddah (four shots behind Niemann) and was solo second in Adelaide (one shot behind Brendan Steele), his two best results in LIV Golf. Meanwhile, his Stingers also have finished second twice as a team.
TOP-10 RAHM
Two-time major winner Jon Rahm, the biggest name among the offseason signees joining LIV Golf, remains in search of his first victory in his new league. Yet, he’s also established himself as this season’s most consistent player.
Rahm, captain of the expansion Legion XIII team, is the only player to finish in the top 10 in each of the first seven tournaments in 2024. That includes a couple of T3 finishes, in Mayakoba and Adelaide. Thanks to his consistency, he ranks second in the season-long Individual points race – ahead of three of this season’s winners.
“I would be lying if I told you I’m anything but happy with how I’ve been playing,” Rahm said recently. “I’ve topped-10 every single time I’ve teed it up, so I can’t say that’s bad. Consistency is always good, but yet I’m looking forward to hopefully getting it across the line.”
SPREADING THE PODIUM WEALTH
Although winning has been confined to just four teams, nearly every team has found the podium.
Of the 13 teams in the league, 11 have at least one top-3 finish, led by the Crushers and Rippers, which have three each.
Cleeks GC, with new addition Adrian Meronk and improved form from captain Martin Kaymer, finished T2 in Singapore – the team’s best-ever finish. HyFlyers GC, led by Brendan Steele’s individual win, finished third in Adelaide – the team’s first podium result since 2022.
The only two teams who have yet to finish on the podium this season are Majesticks GC and Iron Heads GC.
FIRST-TIME WINNERS
Of the six players who’ve won individual titles this season, four won for the first time in LIV Golf – Niemann in Mayakoba, Ancer in Hong Kong, Burmester in Miami and Steele in Adelaide.
Steele’s victory was also the first of any kind for his team, HyFlyers GC.
Legion XIII set the tone for this trend, with the expansion team winning in its debut in Mayakoba. That meant the foursome of Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Caleb Surratt and Kieran Vincent were immediately introduced to the champagne celebrations atop a LIV Golf podium
Two other players celebrated team wins for the first time in LIV Golf: Graeme McDowell, who was signed as a free agent by Smash GC and was part of the winning squad in Las Vegas; and Lucas Herbert, an offseason acquisition by Ripper GC, which has won the last two tournaments.
CRUNCHING NUMBERS
Smash GC, with its revised lineup that now includes Talor Gooch and Graeme McDowell, is the only team in which all four players have at least one top-5 finish this season.
Torque GC has the highest cumulative counting score total of any team (182 under) yet has not won a team trophy in 2024. Two-time winner Crushers are next at 179 under.
RangeGoats GC is 115 under in the first two rounds but just 13 under in the final round. 4Aces GC is 104 under in the first two rounds but 14 under in the final round.
Abraham Ancer leads the league in Fairways Hit percentage this season (67.01%) and yet has not led the field in that category in any of the seven tournaments. When he won in Hong Kong, he ranked 10th that week.
The player who has made the most birdies this season has yet to win – Jon Rahm, who has 110 birdies. Same for the player with the most eagles – Bryson DeChambeau with seven.
Five players have provided counting scores for each of the 21 rounds played thus far – Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton (Legion XIII), Joaquin Niemann (Torque), Talor Gooch (Smash) and Richard Bland (Cleeks).
Hitting greens seems to be the biggest key to success in 2024. Of the seven winners, each ranked inside the top 13 in the field in Greens in Regulation. None of the other primary stat categories can match that.
Just two winners led the field in any stat category during their victory weeks. Joaquin Niemann ranked 1st in GIR while winning Mayakoba, and Brooks Koepka ranked first in Scrambling while winning Singapore.
We expected the RangeGoats to be explosive off the tee with the offseason trades to acquire big hitters Matthew Wolff and Peter Uihlein, and they haven’t disappointed. Bubba Watson’s team ranks first in Driving Distance with an average of 308.5 yards. On the flip side, it’s no surprise they rank T11 in Fairways Hit.
Even so, consider this statistical anomaly – in Miami, Wolff ranked first in Driving Distance and tied for first in Fairways Hit with Watson.
The top 13 players in Driving Distance this season includes six of the league’s seven youngest players. Joaquin Niemann (age 25) ranks 2nd, Matthew Wolff (25) is 3rd, David Puig (22) is 5th, Kieran Vincent (26) is 7th, Eugenio Chacarra (24) is 10th and Caleb Surratt (20) is 13th.
Kieran Vincent has the longest drive this season with a 390-yard bomb in the final round of Singapore. Interestingly, his other measured drive that round was nearly 100 yards shorter (298.9).
Vincent’s 390-yarder in Singapore was the fourth time this season he’s produced the longest drive in a tournament. He hit a 351-yard drive in Mayakoba, a 341.7-yard drive in Las Vegas and a 376-yard drive in Miami.
Of the top 13 players in the Individual Championship standings last season, just two have won tournaments in 2024 – Dustin Johnson in Las Vegas and Brooks Koepka in Singapore. Multiple 2023 winners Talor Gooch, Cameron Smith and Bryson DeChambeau are winless in the first half (but only individually; they’ve each enjoyed team success).
FULL OF SURPRISES
Legion XIII wins their debut. OK, any team with Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton as a 1-2 punch is going to be competitive but we didn’t expect them to gel so quickly with a relatively inexperienced Kieran Vincent and a just-turned-pro teenager Caleb Surratt winning in Mayakoba. It was the first regular-season LIV event in which all four scores count in the final round.
4Aces struggle for results. Dustin Johnson’s squad dominated the inaugural 2022 season and was the top seed again after the 2023 regular season. But now they sit 10th in points with just one top-6 finish, and they’ve twice finished next-to-last (Mayakoba, Adelaide). Traditionally strong in the final round, the Aces seemed to have lost their mojo on Sundays (just a cumulative 14 under this season). Of course, no one will be surprised if they find it in the second half.
David Puig’s double identity. The Fireballs’ young gun has made little impact on LIV Golf leaderboards this season, ranking 43rd in points with just two points finishes. Yet he’s been killing it in his non-LIV starts – two wins, five other top 10s and three other top 15s in his 10 most recent worldwide starts outside the League.
Man of Steele Down Under. Brendan Steele is a world-class player and a multiple winner on the PGA Tour, and when he joined LIV Golf last season, he came out firing with consecutive top-5 finishes. But his results this season didn’t exactly foretell his victory in Adelaide. His only top-20 finish going in was a T18 in Miami, and he tied for last place in Las Vegas. But he showed in Australia how dominant he can be when all parts of his game click.
Anthony Kim’s return to golf. Having retired for a dozen years, Kim signed as a Wild Card player before Jeddah and is using the rest of the season to shake off the rust and recapture the promise he showed back in the day. The upcoming Houston event is a return to the city of his last professional win in 2010.
FIRST-HALF SUPERLATIVES
MOST IMPRESSIVE INDIVIDUAL WIN: Brooks Koepka put on a clinic in Singapore, ranking top 5 in Fairways Hit, Greens in Regulation, Scrambling and Putting en route to his two-shot victory.
MOST IMPRESSIVE TEAM WIN: The Crushers started the final round in Jeddah 11 strokes off the lead but shot a collective 20 under to win by four strokes. They were eight shots better than any other team that Sunday and 15 shots better than the mean average.
MOST EMOTIONAL INDIVIDUAL WIN: Each win is savored, of course, but Stinger GC’s Dean Burmester had a great moment when he was enveloped in a massive group hug by a surprisingly large gathering of South Africans after his win in Miami.
MOST EMOTIONAL TEAM WIN: Pretty easy choice here – Rippers winning in front of their home fans in Adelaide.
BEST SINGLE ROUND: Niemann’s 12-under 59 in the first round at Mayakoba. It’s the second sub-60 round in LIV Golf after Bryson DeChambeau’s 58 in Greenbrier last season.
ACE MAKERS: Richard Bland (Mayakoba), Joaquin Niemann (Hong Kong) and Kalle Samooja (Hong Kong) have produced holes-in-one this season, bringing the LIV Golf total to six.
BEST NON-ACE SHOTS: Difficult to pick just one, so we’ll offer four for consideration – Matthew Wolff’s tee shot at the par-4 16th in Miami that hit pin-high; Phil Mickelson’s driver off the deck in Singapore; Patrick Reed’s 75-foot putt in Singapore; and Abraham Ancer’s first-round walk-off slam dunk from 101 yards on his final hole in Adelaide. There are plenty more so feel free to argue!