“It felt like it was a pillow fight from us,” LIV Golf superstar and Crushers GC captain Bryson DeChambeau said of the match last with him and five-time major winner Brooks Koepka on one side, and world number one Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy on the other in Las Vegas.
DeChambeau, the US Open champion and Koepka barely put up a fight in the 18-hole Ryder Cup style playoff against the two PGA Tour stars at the Crypto.Com-backed event at Shadow Creek Golf Course in Nevada’s glitzy party town.
Scheffler and McIlroy were clearly the more grooved pair with recent tournament play behind them, the former winning the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas earlier this month and McIlroy coming off an impressive showing in Abu Dhabu where he sealed the DP World (European) Tour’s Order of Merit for a sixth time overall besides winning the season-ending Tour Championship.
In contrast, DeChambeau and Koepka had not played competitively since the end of the 2024 LIV Golf League season in Dallas in September, and the rust showed.
“We’re super happy to get the win. It’s a nice way to finish the year,” McIlroy said later. “Scottie and I got off to a pretty good start and then from there it was just about trying to keep the momentum.”
McIlroy, 35, and Scheffler, 28, never trailed in the 18-hole contest involving a field that had a combined 13 majors. The first six holes were played on the batter ball format where each participant played his own ball that Scheffler and McIlroy won on the fourth hole.
Nest up was the Foursomes (alternate shots) between holes seven and 12 which the PGA Tour pair sealed on the final hole with McIlroy’s putt for a 2-0 advantage.
That left the singles over the closing six holes with Scheffler facing Koepka and McIlroy taking on DeChambeau, who beat him at the wire in this year’s US Open. All the Scheffler-McIlroy combination needed at this stage was a half point and Scheffler tapped in for birdie on hole 16 to go 2-up with two to play and with it the $10 million crypto-currency payout.
Reports said that while the LIV Golf pair did churn out some good golf in patches, their better-prepared rivals ended the match needing only 14 of the 18 holes to seal a comprehensive result in a little over four chilly hours at Shadow Creek.