LIV Golf has kicked off round one over in Andalucía. Dean Burmester has a slight one shot lead after round one and we share the leaderboard and team rankings below after one round.

SOTOGRANDE, Spain – Real Club Valderrama bared its teeth in Friday’s first round of LIV Golf Andalucía, making it the toughest scoring day in the league’s young history. 

Dean Burmester shot a 5-under 66 for a one-shot advantage while leading Stinger GC to the top of the team leaderboard, but even the South African wasn’t sure how he managed the low score. 

“Valderrama is some place,” said Burmester, the individual winner earlier this season in Miami on another difficult course, Doral’s Blue Monster. “… I don’t know how I shot 5 under, to be honest with you.” 

Just seven of the 54 players in the field were under par, the fewest amount in a single round of any LIV Golf regular-season tournament. The field stroke average of 3.519 over par, with five players shooting 80 or higher, is the highest for any of LIV Golf’s 88 regular-season rounds. Collectively, the field was 190 over, and just one hole played under par, the par-5 11th. 

Gusting winds reaching nearly 20 mph from a direction that was different than the practice days required players to throw their game plans out the window. The winds also dried the greens, creating firm putting surfaces. 

Fireballs GC Captain Sergio Garcia, who has more experience at Spain’s most celebrated golf course than any other LIV Golf player, told fellow Spaniard and playing partner Jon Rahm early in their round that Valderrama was “showing some teeth today. Probably not the whole mouth but definitely the teeth.” 

Replied the Legion XIII captain: “Some teeth? I think it’s more than that.” 

Rahm, making his first start in his home country since joining LIV Golf in the offseason, shot a 2-over 73 on a day in which he said he made just one mistake, misjudging his putt on the 13th hole, leading to a three-putt bogey.  

“I feel like I played really good,” said Rahm, in an eight-way tie for 16th. “The scores on this golf course a lot of times are worse than it feels like.” 

TEAM COUNTING SCORES
Standings and counting scores for Friday’s opening round of the team competition at LIV Golf Andalucía. The three best scores from each team count in the first two rounds while all four scores count in the final round. The team with the lowest cumulative score after three rounds wins the team title.  

1. STINGER GC -4 (Burmester 66, Oosthuizen 70, Schwartzel 73) 

2. FIREBALLS GC -2 (Chacarra 68, Garcia 69, Ancer 74) 

3. IRON HEADS GC -1 (Lee 67, Vincent 72, Na 73) 

T4. CRUSHERS GC +4 (Lahiri 69, Casey 74, DeChambeau 74) 

T4. MAJESTICKS GC +4 (Horsfield 70, Westwood 71, Poulter 76) 

T6. CLEEKS GC +6 (Bland 71, Kaymer 72, Meronk 76) 

T6. TORQUE GC +6 (Ortiz 72, Pereira 73, Muñoz 74) 

8. 4ACES GC +8 (Reed 72, Johnson 73, Perez 76) 

9. LEGION XIII +9 (Hatton 72, Rahm 73, Vincent 77) 

10. RIPPER GC +10 (Smith 72, Herbert 75, Leishman 76) 

T11. SMASH GC +13 (Koepka 75, McDowell 75, Gooch 76) 

T11. HYFLYERS GC +13 (Mickelson 73, Tringale 76, Steele 77) 

13. RANGEGOATS GC +18 (Wolff 73, Pieters 79, Watson 79) 

ROUND 1 NOTES
RAHM ENJOYS HOME CROWD: Legion XIII Captain Jon Rahm made his first appearance as a LIV Golf player in his native Spain on Friday. His first-round 73 didn’t end how he wanted, with a double bogey at the par-5 17th when he found the water with his approach shot, then a missed birdie putt on the 18th. But he was appreciative of the support on every hole. 

“It’s always fun to be back home and be with the home crowd,” Rahm said. “It’s always a joy to have this many people supporting me all day. It’s so much fun. Just too bad I couldn’t finish it a little bit better for them. I wanted that last putt to go in so bad. It was a really good putt.” 

Rahm has won three team titles and would love nothing more than to celebrate an individual victory at Valderrama. 

“Overall, my feeling should be positive and hopefully I can keep doing good,” Rahm said. “It’s not over. I know I’m seven back, but this golf course has some teeth and if I can shoot a low one tomorrow, put myself in position, it will be a fun Sunday.” 

SERGIO’S CRAZY HOLE-OUT: Fireballs GC captain Sergio Garcia chipped in from 30 yards out for birdie at the par-4 seventh. Although he’s holed out plenty of times in his legendary career, he’s never seen a ball spin inside the cup as many times as it did Friday. 

“You can try to kind of bounce it off the green a couple of times and hopefully it checks and stuff, and that’s what I tried to do,” Garcia explained about the shot. “It bounced a little harder, but I could see it from down there spinning on the hole. It looked like it spun at least six or seven times. So, it was funny but I’m glad it did it. It would have been seven or eight yards by. I was very pleased to see that happen.” 

PREPPING FOR TROON: Stinger GC’s Dean Burmester is one of 16 LIV Golf League full-time players headed to Royal Troon next week for The Open Championship. From that perspective, he was glad to see the difficult wind conditions at Valderrama to help get him prepared for the final major of the season. 

“Certainly in conditions like this, links golf, you hit it a little lower, or I tend to kind of flight the ball down a lot more,” Burmester said. “It was nice to have conditions like this because I’ve been working on a shot with my driver, a really straight low stinger, and no pun intended. I’ve been working on that a lot, and I hit it three times – straight down the middle of the fairway every time. That’s good progress for next week.” 

CHACARRA’S IMPROVED HEALTH: Eugenio Chacarra battled problems with his left hip for much of the year, but he recently began feeling 100% healthy again. His play is starting to reflect it, as he’s produced two top-20 finishes in his last three LIV Golf starts and tied for third at last week’s International Series Morocco. 

Now the young Fireballs star is in contention in his home country after a 3-under 68. 

“It’s more fun that I’m healthy and playing good again,” Chacarra said. “I’m not hurt. I can finish 18 holes and be fine and feel fine. I’m just enjoying golf again.” 

ROUND 1 STATS LEADERS 
Driving accuracy: Dustin Johnson, 85.71% (12 of 14 fairways hit) 
Driving distance: Bryson DeChambeau, 343.9 yards avg. 
Longest drive: Bryson DeChambeau, 386.9 yards, 18th hole 
Greens in regulation: Richard Bland, 72.22% (13 of 18 greens) 
Scrambling: Dean Burmester (8 of 9), Louis Oosthuizen (8 of 9), 88.89% 
Putting: Dean Burmester, Anthony Kim, 1.17 putts per hole 
Bogey-free rounds: none