RADIO
The LIV Golf League will hold this week’s event at Valderrama Golf Club in San Roque, Cadiz, Spain. Real Club Valderrama has hosted several prestigious events over the years including the 1997 Ryder Cup, Andalucia Masters, Volvo Masters, Ladies Spanish Open, Open de Espana, WGC-American Express Championship and beginning last year, LIV Andalucia. Valderrama has consistently been ranked the number one golf course in Spain and a top 100 course in the world.
This week will mark LIV’s second stop at Valderrama. Sergio Garcia, Eugenio Chacarra, David Puig and Jon Rahm are the four Spanish-born players in the field this week. Garcia spoke with media prior to the 2023 event and expressed his excitement about the event being held at Valderrama, calling it “the best field that Valderrama has ever seen” and went on to say that the “fans and the course both deserve a field like this.” The strength of the field has only improved and gotten more exciting for the fans with LIV’s addition of Jon Rahm.
The event will be played Friday-Sunday and will air on the CW Network in 100% of U.S. markets, as well as the CW App and LIV Golf Plus. Globally the event will be broadcasted in over 160 international territories Live and On-Demand, free of charge, via LIV Golf Plus.
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Below is the official Round 1 scorecard provided by LIV Golf.
| Hole | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Out |
| Par | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 35 |
| Yardage | 399 | 421 | 187 | 564 | 381 | 173 | 490 | 351 | 441 | 3407 |
| Hole | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | In |
| Par | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 36 |
| Yardage | 369 | 557 | 212 | 418 | 470 | 225 | 433 | 536 | 463 | 3603 |
Valderrama was constructed in 1974 and designed by architect Robert Trent Jones. It was acquired by James Ortiz-Patino in 1984 and the course was expanded and redesigned. Jones was brought back to help with the redesign process. The course will play as a 7010-yard par-71 this week. The fourth hole La Cascada is the signature hole on the course, it is the longest hole at Valderrama, featuring a difficult two-tiered green and a pond to the right.
While the distance isn’t going to blow anyone away, Valderrama is a challenging course. Sergio Garcia, who has had a ton of success at this course, including multiple wins, has spoken about what it takes to win at Valderrama. He noted that “you have to drive the ball well” and that “you have to put the ball in the right spots. If you manage to do that, then you can score. If you don’t, it’s a grind.”
During its tenure of hosting an annual event on the DP World Tour, we have seen the winner at Valderrama get to as low as -19 and as high as +2. Last season Talor Gooch was victorious in LIV’s inaugural event at Valderrama with a winning score of -12. Only three players scored better than six-under for the week. I expect similar types of scores this week, looking at a winner somewhere between ten and thirteen under par.
Talor Gooch finished the week inside the top-3 in both fairway percentage and green in regulation percentage, emphasizing Sergio Garcia’s point above about putting the ball in the right spots around this course. In fact, each of the top three finishers: Gooch, Dechambeau and Koepka finished inside the top-five on the week in green in regulation percentage. If you get out of place at Valderrama, you are going to have an extremely hard time contending to win.
The top five LIV players this season in Green in Regulation percentage are as follows:
- Paul Casey
- Joaquin Niemann
- Richard Bland
- Jon Rahm
- Sergio Garcia
LIV Golf Betting Odds - Andalucía
Below are the current odds to win LIV Andalucía as posted by BetUs. Odds on different sportsbooks are subject to change, so I would recommend finding the best numbers available.
For the first time ever, I'm going single bullet this week. Everything I have looked at and researched has led me to one name.
Jon Rahm +900
Jon Rahm has been lurking around the leaderboards all season long. In eight career LIV starts, Rahm has yet to finish outside the top ten. He has finished inside the top-five in five of the eight events and has made it into the final group multiple times. Rahm won eleven times on the PGA tour before joining LIV, so it feels like his time to start racking up LIV wins is coming soon.
Rahmbo is getting reacquainted with Valderrama 👀#LegionXIII #LIVGolf pic.twitter.com/JYmqiDPM2c
— Legion XIII (@LegionXIIIgc) July 10, 2024
Rahm surprised many when he withdrew from the LIV Houston event, mid-event, with a foot injury and raised even more eyebrows after pulling out of the U.S. Open in June. However, he teed it up the following week at LIV Nashville, looking sharp while finishing tied for third. He now heads to Valderrama with a chance to get the monkey off his back. While I’m sure Rahm is motivated to pick up his first LIV win each time he tees it up, there is no event more special to him this season than this week back in his home country.
Valderrama is a special place to Rahm and played a huge role in getting him into golf. Rahm’s family attended the ’97 Ryder Cup in Spain and it was a large reason they pushed Rahm into playing golf. Seve Ballesteros, Rahm’s idol, was captain that week in 1997. He has acknowledged nobody can have the kind of impact on Spanish golf that Seve did but takes great pride in continuing to grow the game back home.
In terms of course fit, Rahm has had a spectacular statistical season. He ranks fourth in Green in Regulation percentage, first in total birdies and sixth in putting. It’s actually kind of remarkable those stats haven’t resulted in a win yet for Rahm. I spoke earlier about how important is was to hit greens at Valderrama, and that is what Rahm has done this season. I am expecting it to all come together this week for the Spaniard in his home country.
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