LIV Mayakoba
LIV Golf begins its third season in Mexico at Mayakoba.
The big news for the Saudi Arabia government-backed tour in the offseason was the acquisition of World No. 3 player Jon Rahm (+450), who will captain a new Legion XIII team. That team was just joined by Tyrrell Hatton (14-1), who had been rumored to join LIV for weeks.
Joaquin Niemann (12-1) follows on the board at 12-1.
Bryson DeChambeau (14-1), Cameron Smith (14-1) and Brooks Koepka (18-1) were all two-time winners last season, while Talor Gooch (18-1) won three times.
Aside from Rahm and Hatton, new defectors to LIV Golf include Adrian Meronk (20-1), Lucas Herbert (50-1) and Caleb Surratt (210-1), who won the SEC individual title last year at the University of Tennessee.
The Event
LIV Mayakoba opened the 2023 season and does the same in 2024. LIV in Roman numerals stands for 54 as all its events are 54 holes and conducted over three rounds. The total purse is $25 million ($20 million for individual and $5 million for team competition) with the winner’s share being $4 million for the individual win and $3 million for a team victory. All LIV tournaments are also conducted as shotgun starts.
The Course
The El Camaleon Golf Club is a resort course that was designed by Greg Norman in 2006 and hosted the PGA Tour from 2007 to 2022. It is part of the all-inclusive Mayakoba Resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and sits about 50 miles south of Cancun near the northeastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula.
The track will play as a par-71 of 7,116 yards. The course runs through dense tropical jungle, mangrove forests and oceanfront. The tree-lined fairways, which protect the players from the wind even though this is a coastal resort course, are of average width and constructed from Sea Isle Paspalum. The rough at two inches is not all that penal, but the jungles and canals can punish errant tee shots. Because of the Paspalum surfaces, the ball tends to sit up higher on this grass, which allows elite ball strikers to have the most success. The greens, of the same surface, are relatively slow on the stimpmeter (10.5). The Paspalum green complexes (7,000 square feet average) are similar to what players see at the Puerto Rico Open and Corales Puntacana Championship. Low scores are the norm here and if you look at the previous winners, and the driver is not required much.
Recent updates include: Green complexes at holes 4 and 8; expanded professional tees at holes 9 and 12; and new professional tee at holes 10 and 18.
Recent History
2023: Charles Howell III (-16/197); 45-1
Selections
Joaquin Niemann (12-1, FanDuel)
Niemann already has an event under his belt having finished fourth two weeks ago at the Dubai Desert Classic.
He finished fifth in 2021 in the PGA Tour event held at Mayakoba.
Carlos Ortiz (29-1, FanDuel)
Ortiz was a LIV free agent in the offseason and joined the Torque team with Niemann, Mito Pereira and Sebastian Munoz.
He has come close to winning on this course in his native Mexico a couple of times with runner-up finishes here in 2019 and 2021.
