LIV Golf Dallas Team Championship: Everything to know ahead of the event at Maridoe

The polarizing LIV Golf tour is coming to the Dallas-Fort Worth area next weekend for the LIV Golf Dallas Team Championship.
This event is the league’s final event of the season at which the 2024 team champion will be crowned. Here’s what you need to know about the event:
Carrollton’s Maridoe Golf Club, which was described by its designer as “one of the sterner tests of golf you’ll find anywhere,” will host the three-day tournament.
Maridoe’s owner, Dallas billionaire Albert Huddleston, has said he has no qualms about hosting the tour funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
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“You guys want to spread golf throughout the world and so do I,” he told the LIV representatives when courting this event.
Pro golfers Will Zalatoris, Jordan Spieth, Davis Riley, Sebastian Munoz and Lee Trevino are all members at Maridoe.
The course, which opened in 2017, is nearly 8,000 yards from the tips with a difficult 79.6 rating and 155 slope. The official yardage for the tournament is 7,535 yards
Negotiations for a merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf have crawled along, but some apparent progress has been made. Representatives from both leagues met last week in New York, ESPN reported.
According to Golfweek, a mid-December TV event will take place between two of the PGA Tour’s biggest stars and two of LIV Golf’s biggest stars. Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy will face off against Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka in another edition of “The Match.”
The event will take place in Las Vegas and air on TNT, similar to other iterations of “The Match.”
In late August, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said a deal with Saudi Arabia’s PIF is a priority, though there is no deadline.
“I think when you get into productive conversations, that enhances the likelihood of positive outcomes, and that enhances the spirit of those very conversations,” Monahan said. “I think that’s where things stand.”
If you’ve attended a PGA Tour event before, quite a bit about a LIV Golf tournament will seem unrecognizable.
First, the biggest difference: LIV Golf tournaments are only three days and 54 holes, compared to the PGA Tour’s four days and 72 holes. Not only are the tournaments shorter, but there are fewer events on the LIV Golf schedule.
There also is no stress of a cut line. If you start a LIV event, you make it to Sunday no matter what. Part of that is due to the unique team format, as there are 13 teams of four players.
Another unrecognizable feature of LIV Golf: shotgun starts. Rather than the PGA Tour’s format of teeing off one group at a time, a shotgun start means all players start at the same time at different tees around the course. LIV Golf rounds are significantly faster because of this format.
The players’ earnings are also astronomically higher than the PGA Tour. For example, former SMU golfer Bryson DeChambeau has earned roughly $28.5 million in 33 LIV Golf events. On a per-event basis, that dwarfs the roughly $27.5 million he made on the PGA Tour in 144 events.
Since there are significantly fewer events on a LIV Golf schedule, the fields of players are stacked at each event. Whereas on a PGA Tour schedule, the best of the best, like Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele, don’t play every event. This creates some occasional weak fields throughout the PGA Tour schedule. The LIV fields are also much smaller. The Team Championship features 52 players, compared to PGA events that regularly feature over 130 players.
Beyond the different format and exorbitant prize money, the overall vibe of a LIV Golf event is completely different and much less buttoned-up. Players are allowed to wear shorts during the events, whereas the PGA Tour requires the players wear pants. There is also plenty of music blaring during the tournament and much rowdier galleries at the events.
The competition begins Friday, September 20, when the quarterfinals tee off at 11:15 a.m. On Saturday, the semifinals tee off at 11:15 a.m. and the finals will tee off at 11:05 a.m. Sunday.
Gates and hospitality areas open each day at 9 a.m. A couple of concerts highlight the weekend entertainment options. At the conclusion of play Saturday, Bailey Zimmerman will perform followed by Martin Garrix on Sunday evening.
If you can’t attend, you can watch online and on TV. Friday’s quarterfinals will be live on the CW App and LIV Golf Plus. Saturday’s semifinals and Sunday’s finals will both be live on the CW Network, the CW App and LIV Golf Plus.
Below are the 13 teams competing in the tournament, listed with their current seeding for the Team Championship in parentheses. The seeding, which was finalized after this weekend’s event in Chicago, is determined by points awarded to each team throughout the season based on their finish at each tournament.
For the quarterfinals, teams seeded 1-3 will receive a bye and teams seeded 4-13 will go head-to-head in match-play competitions. That means Crushers GC, Legion XIII and Ripper GC are on to the semifinals and don’t compete Friday.
The higher-seeded teams will select their opponents. All 40 players on the 10 teams will tee off in a shotgun start. For each head-to-head team matchup, there will be three matches: two singles matches and an alternate-shot match. Each match winner receives one point and the five teams that earn two points make it to Saturday’s semifinals.
The semifinals are the same format as the quarterfinals. All 32 players will compete in a shotgun start with the same number of matches being played. The four teams that earn two points will compete for the Team Championship on Sunday.
The finals on Sunday do include all 13 teams and 52 players, each playing one round of stroke play. The four semifinals winners will compete for first through fourth place, the four semifinals losers will compete for fifth through eighth place and the five teams that bowed out in the quarterfinals will compete for ninth through 13th place.
The four individual scores of a team will count toward the team’s score and the lowest team score among the four teams in Sunday’s finals will be crowned 2024 LIV Golf League Team Champions.
Prize money is awarded to teams based on their finishing position from Sunday’s round. Below is how the prize money is distributed to the teams.
It figures to be a remarkable event that local golf fans should be itching to see. Some of the world’s best golfers will compete for incredible amounts of prize money in LIV’s first tournament in North Texas
The field also features several players with local ties such as former SMU golfer and two-time U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau. Also competing are former Texas Tech player Mito Pereira, a pair of former University of North Texas golfers Carlos Ortiz and Sebastián Muñoz and former Oklahoma golfer Abraham Ancer. Another Texan in the field is Patrick Reed, who won the Masters Tournament in 2018 was born in San Antonio and lives in The Woodlands outside of Houston.
Find more information about how to attend the tournament and other events throughout the weekend here.
Find more golf coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.