LIV Golf Debuts in South Africa
LIV Golf held its first African event at The Club at Steyn City this week, with Round 1 tee times confirmed March 19 and the Jack Nicklaus‑designed course making its debut. ( ) Louis Oosthuizen captains the Southern Guards after recent finishes of T8 in Hong Kong and T21 in Singapore, while Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm arrive on hot form from recent wins. ( )
Field size is 57 players — 13 four‑man teams plus five wild‑card entrants — and the tournament is being played over four rounds (72 holes) with shotgun starts each day. (livgolf.com) Organisers put a $30 million total purse on the line, split into a $20 million individual pool and a $10 million team pool, with the individual winner slated to earn $4 million and the winning team set to split $3 million. (sports.yahoo.com) Promoters say roughly 90,000 tickets have been sold for the four‑day event, a figure organisers and local analysts say makes it one of the largest golf attendances in South Africa in decades. (livgolf.com) The Club at Steyn City is set up as a long par‑71 at about 7,557 yards for the week, and LIV’s event notes that only a handful of players in the field have prior competition experience at the venue. (livgolf.com) Organisers adjusted the opening‑round schedule after weather forecasts, bringing the shotgun start forward to about 10:05 a.m. local time (from an originally later start) to avoid afternoon storms, and issued updated gate‑opening times for spectators. (sabcsport.com) Bookmakers and previews list Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau among the market leaders, with published odds showing Rahm around 16/5 and DeChambeau near 8/1, while Joaquin Niemann and home‑favourite Dean Burmester were also cited among the leading prices. (todays-golfer.com)
