LIV Golf Match Play Championship: Seedings, qualifying, process, teams for season-ending event in Miami

The final LIV Golf event of the Saudi-backed tour's inaugural year will take place at Trump National Doral in Miami, Florida between October 28 and October 30. LIV Golf, which has employed a loose team format throughout the season, will host a partial match-play team championship for its final event.

And as with anything LIV, it's certainly different. Let's break down how this will work.

Seeding

During the seven-event regular season, each of LIV's 12 teams with rather terrible names and logos earn points based on their finish. The bottom four teams get zero, and here's the allocation for the top eight.

1st – 32 points
2nd – 24 points
3rd – 16 points
4th – 12 points
5th – 8 points
6th – 4 points
7th – 2 points
8th – 1 point

The team with the most points at the end of the year (which has been clinched by the 4 Aces of captain Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Talor Gooch, and Pat Perez … and wow what a fan-friendly group that is, get your team t-shirts now) gets the No. 1 seed. The top four seeds will receive a bye in the first round.

Here are the team standings entering the final event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Try not to cringe, and yes for some reason Stinger isn't plural.

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

Championship format explained

On the first day, teams will be allowed to select their opponents in descending order. So the seed No. 5 will pick their opponent, then the No. 6 seed, No. 7, and the No. 8 seed will face the only team left over.

The head-to-head match play is single-elimination, and each match includes two singles match-play competitions and one doubles match-play in a foursomes (alternate shot) format. Each win is worth one point, and there are no “halved” matches, meaning we go back to the first tee if it's all square after 18 holes. The first team to two points advances.

The top four seeds who had a bye on Friday will then be allowed to select their opponents for Saturday's matches in descending order, with No. 1 going first and so on. Four teams will be eliminated on Friday, and another four will be out on Saturday. The final four teams will compete on Sunday.

On Sunday the match play portion is over, and all 16 remaining players will hit the course in two-man groups and a shotgun start. The team with the lowest total score of the day will be declared the winner. All four scores will count, unlike during the “regular season” where two scores are dropped from Round 1 and Round 2, and one score during Round 3.

Why are they calling this the Match Play Championship when there's no match play during the most important round of the event?

The LIV Tour everyone!

What is the prize money?

The first-place prize for the four-man teams is $16 million out of a $50 million purse. In all of the previous events, the golfers competed for $4 million first-place earnings from a $20 million purse in the individual competition, with $5 million more available in winnings for the team competition.

But the money gets ratcheted up significantly in Miami, as here's what each team will be splitting based on their finish.

1st: $16 million
2nd: $10 million
3rd: $8 million
4th $4 million
5th-8th: $2 million
9th-12th: $1 million

That's $250k just for showing up, and as much as $4 million if your team captain carries you to victory. Not too bad for just two or three days worth of work.

  
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