The Real Club Valderrama and the thousands of fans who will gather at the prestigious course that hosted the 1997 Ryder Cup will once again enjoy one of the best sporting spectacles in the world from July 11 to 13 with the third edition of the LIV Golf Andalucía, the only tournament of this circuit to be held on European continental soil.
The meeting of the best golf in the world, Valderrama
Major winners, world number ones and other world-class players, including Spanish superstars Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia, will compete in Spain, which is an added incentive to come to RC Valderrama.
Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Joaquín Niemann, Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson are just some of the other world-class players who will compete on the iconic Spanish course in an event that will distribute $25 million in prize money, with $4 million going to the individual champion and $3 million to the top-ranked team.
With fans at the center of every tournament on the new circuit, LIV Golf Andalucía presents golf enthusiasts with a fun-filled three-day sporting experience.
The official calendar of the LIV Golf League 2025 consists of 14 tournaments with two titles at stake: the Individual Championship and the Team Championship. One of the novelties this year lies in the scoring system for the team classification. Now the four scores of each member of each team will count in all rounds, adding an extra level of pressure and excitement to the tournament.
In 2024, only the final round counted on the four players on the team, while the first two rounds discarded the worst card. This year, every stroke will be crucial for the team.
Another important change for this season is the television rights agreement with FOX Sports, which broadcasts live LIV Golf tournaments in the United States.
In addition, LIV Golf 2025 has added five new destinations to its calendar: Riyadh, Mexico City, South Korea, Indianapolis, where the Individual Champion will be crowned, and Michigan, the new venue for the Team Championship.
New additions of the best golf in the world at Valderrama
The 2025 season has seen new additions to the circuit. The inaugural tournament, in Riyadh, saw the debut of six players as full-time members of LIV Golf, each representing a different country: Northern Ireland’s Tom McKibbin (Legion XIII), Korea’s Yubin Jang (Iron Heads GC), Spain’s Luis Masaveu (Fireballs GC), Denmark’s Frederik Kjettrup (Cleeks GC), New Zealand’s Ben Campbell (RangeGoats GC) and Taiwan’s Chieh-po Lee (Wild Card).
All participants in LIV Golf play in teams and also in an individual competition, which runs throughout the season. In each tournament, each player (including wild cards) finishes with a total score of three rounds. The top 24 finishers in each event earn points in the standings.
The player with the most points at the end of the season wins the title… and the $18 million prize money that goes with it. Last year, it was Rahm who won the prestigious title of individual champion of the season thanks to his victory in the LIV Chicago, which earned him 22 million dollars (the aforementioned 18 plus 4 for winning that tournament). The Basque player pocketed almost 35 million dollars in the entire LIV 2024 season.
He was followed by Joaquín Niemann, with 28.5 million, and Sergio García, with a total of 13.6 million. Of the 58 players who took part in the Arab League last year, only four did not reach one million dollars in earnings.
The team championship is decided at the final event of the season, in a knockout format that combines hole play on the first two days and stroke play on the third and final day, creating head-to-head matchups throughout the course.
Exclusive options of the world’s best golf at Valderrama
Fans have a selection of exclusive options at LIV Golf League events. At Valderrama, the Course Pass provides access to the interactive, festival-style Fan Village, as well as great food and beverages. The Birdie Shack experience is located next to the iconic 17th hole. With this pass you can enjoy an open bar, high-end snacks and a great selection of music throughout the day.
The Birdie Shack Skybox pass also includes a semi-private front row box for eight people with in-house bartender service. The exclusive Club 54 is the five-star space, a unique experience next to the 18th hole. Attendees will enjoy a multi-course menu designed by chefs, unlimited bar and cocktails made by a barista.
There is also the Club 54 Skybox option and the LIV Premium pass, a pass that opens all the public areas of the tournament at any time to enjoy the best of everything: the food and cocktails at Club 54, the party at Birdie Shack and the unparalleled views of the 17th hole. Tickets can be purchased through livgolf.
Liv Golf: The global sports sensation of the best golf in the world
Inaugurated in 2022, the LIV Golf League continues to visit championship courses around the world. Led during its first three years by its CEO, Greg Norman, replaced this year by Scott O’Neil, it is a revolutionary golf league, with 13 teams, 54 players, three tournament rounds, shotgun starts, no cuts, and high-level courses. The name LIV Golf comes from the Roman numeral 54, known in the sport as the perfect 18-hole score. Each season of the LIV Golf League culminates in an exciting team championship.
Individual and team winners will share a $405 million prize purse during the LIV Golf League season. Each tournament is endowed with $25 million ($20 million for the individual competition and $5 million for the team competition), of which the winner pockets $4 million, while the champion team takes home $3 million ($750,000 for each player).
The second individual winner receives a prize of US$2,125,000, the third, US$1,500,000, and the fourth, US$1,050,000. All players receive income for the mere fact of participating in the tournament, with the last player in the standings receiving US$50,000. The individual champion of the entire season will pocket a prize of $18 million. The team championship that ends the season will distribute $50 million in prize money, of which the winning team will pocket $14 million.
The first two of this meeting
Valderrama, the Spanish course with the most prestigious curriculum as host of major international tournaments, lived in 2023 a new experience by hosting the LIV Golf, a “revolutionary” competition created the previous year that introduced many new features compared to the traditional ones.
New playing format, shotgun starts, 12 teams, 48 players, 54 holes in three rounds with no cut, individual and team titles, background music on the course, no ban on shorts…. And money, lots of money, both in prize money (over $400 million the first season) and in signings. The Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund bet heavily on the idea conceived and promoted by Greg Norman and began to hire world-class figures on the basis of multimillion-dollar checks with astronomical amounts never before seen in the world of golf.
With this background, the expectations of enjoying a great sporting spectacle attracted a multitude of spectators to the Real Club Valderrama in July 2023, where the first event brought together winners of 28 majors altogether.
With three top-four finishers at the Masters and Brooks Koepka winning at Oak majors and former world number one.
The four, who held eight of the twenty-five majors computed among the players competing at Valderrama, were the ones who started Sunday with the best chance of winning the tournament and the $4 million that came with the individual victory (there was also $3 million to be shared among the four members of the winning team).
It was finally Gooch, with 12 under par, who was proclaimed the deserved winner of the LIV Golf Andalucía at the Real Club Valderrama, eighth tournament of the season and his first incursion in Spain of the multimillionaire circuit promoted and financed by Saudi Arabia.
A crowd of spectators enjoyed an extraordinary sporting spectacle in which the excitement was maintained until the end with a double tie for the lead in the final holes between Gooch and DeChambeau.
A birdie from 5 meters on the last hole broke the tie in favor of Gooch. DeChambeau finished second, with -11, in a podium that was closed by Koepka, with -9.
The best non-US player, in fourth place, was Colombian Sebastián Muñoz, who carded a score of six under par. In fifth position, with -4, one of the three classified players was David Puig, the best Spaniard of the tournament and who shared a place with the Americans Patrick Reed and Jason Kokrak, while Sergio García (-2) finished in tenth place, tied with the Chilean Joaquín Niemann.
The player from Castellón was a priori one of the favorites at Valderrama given his great knowledge and victorious experience in this golf course, but this time, although he had a good start, things did not go as expected and he had to settle for the last place in the top 10 of the tournament.
In the team standings, the winner was Torque with 16 strokes under par, ahead of Range Goats, second with -11; and Crushers, third with -7. “The first two wins were different. This one was on a historic course, beating two major champions on the last putt on the last hole. I felt really good today, we pushed each other, and it’s great that putt went in. I knew if I took the fairways, I was going to have opportunities.”
So said Gooch, 31, who was having an exceptional and very lucrative season: three wins and 13.3 million dollars. After the Valderrama tournament, only the world’s number one and two players in the world surpassed them in earnings that year: Scottie Scheffler, with 18.5 million dollars, and Jon Rahm, with 15.2 million.
Sergio García, one of the favorites a priori due to his great knowledge of Valderrama and his previous victories in the emblematic course, finished eleventh, tied with Chilean Joaquín Niemann.
Sergio’s turn
The player from Castellón would more than make up for it the following year on his star course, as he would be proclaimed champion of the LIV Golf Andalucía 2024 in a thrilling final. It was the first time in the LIV Golf League that the victory had to be settled in a playoff for both the individual and team titles and it seemed that the goddess Fortune had turned her back on Garcia at the worst moment, on his last hole with a bogey when he was leading the tournament.
But luck was in the Spaniard’s favor this time and the Indian Anirban Lehiri, with the victory practically in his pocket on his last hole, missed a putt of less than one meter and led to a playoff against the Spaniard, both with an overall score of 5 under par.
On an unprecedented day in the young history of LIV Golf, Garcia and the team he captains, Fireballs GC, staged a fairytale finish for their Spanish fans at the fantastic Real Club Valderrama, which as always looked immaculate and spectacular. Garcia came from seven strokes down on Sunday to win his first LIV Golf individual title on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff against Crushers GC’s Lahiri.
Meanwhile, teammates Abraham Ancer and David Puig (the other was Eugenio Lopez Chacarra) defeated the Crushers’ duo of captain Bryson De Chambeau and Paul Casey in the aggregate team scoring playoff, and the Fireballs – with three Spaniards on staff – swept to both trophies at the famed 1997 Ryder Cup host course.
The outcome of this event of the best golf in the world
It was LIV Golf’s first double playoff, and only the second team playoff in the history of the Saudi league. For Garcia, the script could not have been better written, as he won for the first time in LIV Golf after three previous playoff defeats. That it happened on his favorite course, where he had won three other tournaments (Andalucia Masters) and where he had finished in the top 10 in 16 of his 17 starts, made it even more special.
Garcia, then 44, started the day on par with the field, seven strokes behind leader Lahiri. But the Spanish star played flawless golf for 17 holes, making six birdies and putting pressure on Lahiri, who was trying to break his own nine-year winless drought. While Garcia suffered his only bogey of the day with three putts on the par-3 3rd hole to close his round with 66 (-5), Lahiri birdied his penultimate hole, the iconic par-5 17th.
This put the tournament in the hands of the Indian player heading into his final challenge, the 18th, the toughest hole on the course that week. Lahiri found the center of the green with his approach shot and rolled his birdie attempt to 90 centimeters to set up the potential winning par. But, with a chance to win the individual title and also secure the team title for the Crushers, he missed the putt and, with a final round 73, would fall back to -5 and set up the double playoff.
The Spaniard and Lahiri made par on their first playoff hole. Meanwhile, in the team playoff just behind them, DeChambeau ran into trouble on the 18th tee and had to drop his second shot. Casey’s approach ended up in the rough behind the green. DeChambeau bogeyed the hole, while Ancer and Puig each made pars to claim the first team victory of the season for the Fireballs. Like his captain, Lahiri made a mistake on the second playoff hole that put him in trouble, and Garcia won with a par.
Spanish stars of this event of the best golf in the world
Three (except Masaveu) know Real Club Valderrama to perfection, where Sergio García has had better luck so far. No less than four times has the golfer from Borriol won at the award-winning course in Cadiz, specifically at last year’s LIV Golf Andalucía and at the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters in 2011, 2017 and 2018. Sergio became the first Spaniard to win twice at Valderrama, where of the 15 European Tour tournaments he played there 14 he finished in the top 10. In 2023 he finished tenth at the LIV Golf Andalucía.
That same position was Rahm’s last year at LIV Golf de Valderrama, a course where he has also played three editions of the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters, with his best performance coming in 2019, when he finished second. David Puig was the best Spaniard at the LIV Golf Andalucía in 2023, where he finished fifth, and last year he finished 27th, tied with Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson…. Luis Masaveu Roncal is a shining example of LIV Golf’s determination to promote the game’s brightest young talents among its star-studded roster.
The 22-year-old from Madrid has taken giant strides in his budding career and has already written his name in the history books by becoming the first Spanish amateur to make the cut at The Open Championship. He was a semifinalist in the 2024 US Amateur.
Rahm & Valderrama
“Valderrama is one of the best designs I’ve ever seen in my life, visually it’s beautiful and it’s wonderfully cared for. I find Valderrama hilarious, it makes you think and play all kinds of shots and, if you miss, you can play it. It keeps you on your toes. I love the classic courses where you have to use different strategies. It is golf in its purest form.
Money galore at the world’s top golf event
Last year Jon Rahm was crowned the winner of the third edition of the LIV Golf Tour. The golfer from Barrika pocketed a bonus of 18 million dollars, which was added to the almost 17 million earned during the season. He thus became the highest paid golfer (in tournament prizes) in the world in 2024.
Sergio & Valderrama
“I like all the holes at Valderrama, each one has its attraction. It’s a course that demands a lot from you and doesn’t allow you a break, it makes you think and keep your concentration from the moment you stand on the tee of one. You have to put the ball in the right place and it requires patience. I think we all play it with a lot of respect. I really like this course and everyone knows it’s my favorite.”
Andalucía Golf, the latest news of this little world
If you want to know more about Golf news, do not hesitate to visit our website where you will find a variety of information about this world and you can continue reading the magazine.
Leave a Reply