Crushers riding hot streak as they enter LIV Golf Andalucía

SAN ROQUE, Spain – Two weeks ago in Dallas, in the euphoric aftermath of his team’s third consecutive tournament win, Crushers GC Captain Bryson DeChambeau offered an apt description when discussing the potential of his red-hot club.

“Unstoppable force,” DeChambeau said, making it contingent on his team keeping up its torrid pace, of course

No reason to think the Crushers will be slowing down any time soon, particularly this week at LIV Golf Andalucía, where they’ve reached the podium on each of their previous visits. They finished third in 2023 and second last year, losing to the hometown Fireballs GC in a team playoff.

If they continue their winning ways at Valderrama, the Crushers will tie LIV Golf’s all-time record for most consecutive wins, matching the four straight won by 4Aces GC in the inaugural 2022 season.

They’re the second team to get that opportunity this season. Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs won three straight (Adelaide, Hong Kong and Singapore) before running out of steam in Miami with a fifth-place finish.

Win streaks are not unusual on LIV Golf, at least from a team perspective. Last year, the Crushers and Cameron Smith’s Ripper GC each won two straight. In 2023, Joaquin Niemann’s Torque GC won two straight.

Of the seven different win streaks in league history, six belong to teams. The only individual player who has managed to string together a streak is Talor Gooch in 2023, when he went back-to-back in Adelaide and Singapore en route to eventually winning the season-long Individual Championship.

Why are team streaks much more prevalent that individual streaks in LIV Golf?

Obviously, there are just 13 potential team winners at each tournament versus 54 potential individual winners, so less opponents to defeat.

And then there’s a matter of momentum. One player may carry it from week to week, but if multiple players are in form, the odds of success seem to improve exponentially.

“You know how golf is; it's a kind of a momentum game,” said 4Aces star Patrick Reed, who could match Gooch with his own two-game individual streak after winning a playoff two weeks ago in Dallas. “Once you start getting some of that momentum and start playing solid and getting that confidence, it kind of trickles down into the team, and then all the other guys start playing a little better.

“Once you have all four of your guys playing some solid and steady golf, that's what wins golf tournaments, especially counting all four scores.”

Ah yes, the four scores. This is the first year in which each player’s score has counted in each round. A year ago, the four counting scores rule only applied to the final round, so a team had the potential to overcome the results from a struggling player in the first two rounds.

But this year, if any single player struggles, it’s nearly impossible for a team to end the week on top of the podium. Of the first nine tournaments this season, just two team winners succeeded when their worst-scoring player that week finished outside the top 40 on the individual leaderboard. Fortunately, those two teams counteracted by having the individual champion.

The Fireballs won in Hong Kong with then-full-time player Luis Masaveu finished T42 while Garcia won the individual crown. And when the Crushers won the first of three straight in Korea, Anirban Lahiri finished T45 but was counteracted by DeChambeau’s victory.

“With four scores counting every round,” Garcia said, “I guess if the team is riding some good momentum, some good feelings and all of them are playing consistently, it's maybe a little bit easier to get on one of those hot streaks than if you were choosing – like what we were doing last year – three, three and four.

“Taking that one extra score can make a big difference. It can be like a four-, five-, six-shot difference.”

Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII have won six team titles since becoming the league’s first expansion team last season but have never won two straight. However. they have won twice this season and are one of just four teams to pop champagne bottles as tournament winners this year.

Asked if the lack of variety among the team winners surprises him, Rahm replied: “Yes and no. I think that’s what can happen when you add a fourth player in. I think the deeper teams are going to have a better chance. You need a more compete team.”

The 4Aces were that team in 2022 under a format that included two counting scores in each of the first two rounds and three counting scores in the final round. After four straight wins, they eventually ended the season winning the Team Championship.

“The one thing I remember, it always seemed the Aces were always on top,” Reed said. “It was awesome looking at the leaderboard and seeing 4Aces up there. We need to get back to that.”

The Crushers are that team now. In Dallas, they won by 11 strokes and had all four players finish inside the top 11. It was their most dominant win on a tough course, and they’ll have a similar challenge – although on a completely different setup – at Valderrama.

“We're ripe and ready for the challenge whenever it is a tough test,” DeChambeau said. “I think that's why we're able to shine amongst all the teams is because the harder the test gets, we seem to do better.”