There’s a new golf tournament aiming to wrestle publicity — and players — away from the PGA Tour.

The Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational Series is offering lucrative payouts, weekly drafts and a unique format for individual players and teams alike. And although the competition has dealt with its fair share of criticism, its first official event will undoubtedly draw plenty of attention when it begins in London on June 9.

The LIV Golf Invitational Series format greatly differs from the familiar four-day stroke play approach of the traditional golf tours. Here’s everything you need to know about how the LIV Golf Invitational Series is being run:

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LIV Golf format, explained

The LIV Golf Invitational Series features two competitions occurring concurrently: an individual event and a team event.

Seven events will take place over the course of LIV Golf’s four-month regular season. The eighth event will be the team championship in late October in Miami, where teams compete against one another in a match play format to see who earns the inaugural LIV Golf team trophy.

Individual event

The first seven LIV events will have an individual competition, where each golfer will compete in a stroke play format over the course of 54 holes. There are no cuts and the golfer with the lowest score after 54 holes will be declared winner. Pretty simple, all things considered.

Team event

The team element of the competition is where things start to change. Each event will feature 12 teams made up of four golfers each, with LIV Golf appointing a captain to lead each team. Those captains will then select the other three players for their teams in a snake draft format each week, as the player pool will change from event to event.

The captain’s responsibilities don’t end there, though, as they also will select the lineup for each week.

Each team will have a logo, name and unique colors.

Team scoring

Team scoring is another aspect where LIV Golf differs from the PGA Tour. During the first two rounds, only each team’s best two scores will be used to quantify where they rank. That number rises to three in the third and final round.

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Lastly, the team championship will be held during the eighth and final event. That event will be a four-day, four-round match-play knockout bracket.

LIV Golf payouts

Each regular-season event (the first seven events of the season) features a $25 million purse; $20 million to be split over the 48 golfers who played a part in the tournament (winner earns $4 million, last place earns $120,000). The remaining $5 million is dispersed among the teams that finished in the top-three places ($3 million for the winner, $1.5 million for second-place, $500,000 for third place).

At the end of the individual events, players who have participated in at least four events will divide what amounts to a top-heavy $30 million bonus pool. The individual champion will net $18 million, the second-place golfer $8 million, the third-place finisher $4 million, and on down the line.

The winning team after the season finale will receive a cool $16 million. However, all teams that take part will bring home a pretty penny (the last-place team, for example, will bring in $1 million in tournament earnings).

Source: https://www.sportingnews.com/us/golf/news/liv-golf-format-draft-payouts/xxdlqeldjwtzx7cfq5rcyu5z