Tom McKibbin and Caleb Surratt - Do They Make Legion XIII Unbeatable?
_{The two young stars on Legion XIII came out to play last week, what happens to the team titles if they do that every week?}

It should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that Legion XIII are the team to beat this year. Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton are statistically the two best players in the league, so the only real question mark was the two young players rounding out their roster.

Last year we saw two different sides of Caleb Surratt. Frequently he’d be hovering around the top 10 and then have a brutal third round, eventually finishing in the middle of the pack or even the bottom third. Early in the year, at the Las Vegas event he finished T12 and it looked like he had quickly settled into the professional golf world and was going to compete throughout the year. The rest of the year was pretty lackluster on LIV, he had a couple of other top 20s, but nothing spectacular.

Things were pretty different on the Asian Tour for him, he’s played 4 events on the International Series and finished top 5 in three of them, one of those being against a very strong field at the Saudi International. Last week he finished 11th but was T4 at one point during the final round. Maybe I’m in the movie Groundhog Day, but now it feels like Caleb may have settled into the professional golf world, stopped chasing results, and is playing more free.

Tom McKibbin, who turned down a PGA Tour card in favor of filling the final spot on Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII for the 2025 season, started off with a bang in Riyadh. Through the first and second rounds he was right in the mix at the top of the leaderboard. At some point it became clear nobody was going to catch Meronk, and in fairness McKibbin really couldn’t get anything going in the final round, but still finished T15. He shot 65-69-72, but in his first event on LIV Golf he showed everyone just how talented he is.

That brings us to the real issue here. If this is the Tom McKibbin we’re going to see at every event, and Caleb Surratt has truly found some comfort and begins to score more consistently, who’s going to beat Legion XIII? Legion XIII as a whole didn’t have the best final round, and they still won in Riyadh by 11 shots.

Obviously golf has its ups and downs, and most every team is going to look pretty unbeatable when all four guys are playing well, but when you’ve got Rahm and Hatton near the top of the leaderboard week in and week out, that’s two less stars that need to align for a runaway victory.

Legion could win 6 times this year, but Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers GC, Joaquin Niemann’s Torque GC, and Cam Smith’s Ripper GC have the rosters to put up a fight every week, so time will tell.

Has David Puig (finally) arrived?

_{Puig is a tremendous talent who’s been playing great golf - just not in LIV events.}

For the past few years it’s seemed like David Puig was on the precipice of establishing himself as a top player on LIV Golf, and it just wasn’t coming together. In fact, he was doing what Caleb Surratt has done the past few months. His performances on LIV Golf weren’t anything to write home about, but he was playing out of this world on the Asian Tour events he’d sprinkle in.

Since joining towards the end of 2022, he’s only had a few top 5 finishes. For someone with the talent of David Puig, it felt like he was going to make more of a statement. He’s won twice on the Asian Tour and been near the top of the leaderboard many other times. He just wasn’t putting it all together during the LIV Golf events.

It’s starting to feel like that might have changed. Before LIV Golf Riyadh he played two events on the DP World Tour, the Ras Al Khaimah Championship and the Bahrain Championship. Puig finished top five in both. During the final round of LIV Golf Riyadh he shot 65, tied for the best in the field, and would finish T6.

That marks 5 top 10 finishes in his last 8 events dating back to the Spanish Open in late September.

He’s been on the brink of this for so long, so if 2025 is when he’s really put the pieces together, get used to seeing David Puig near the top of the leaderboard.

Will the hometown favorites - Ripper GC - repeat?
_{Ripper GC won in a rowdy team playoff in their home country last year, and the crowds will surely be pulling for the repeat.}

The scenes at The Grange Golf Club in Adelaide have always been pretty wild when LIV Golf is in town. Two years ago Chase Koepka made a hole in one at The Watering Hole, LIV Golf’s party hole, and last year it played host to the first every team playoff. And Ripper GC won it in dramatic fashion.

As we just discussed, it’s going to be quite the battle to beat Legion XIII if McKibbin and Surratt have their games dialed. Those are two pretty special talents to have as the clear bottom two players on the roster. So if Ripper GC want to repeat on their home soil they’re going to have to come to play.

Both Marc Leishman and Lucas Herbert played some really solid golf last week in Riyadh. Lucas finished T4, just a few shots back of the winner Adrian Meronk, and Leishman finished just one shot back of Lucas. Matt Jones was T33 and Cam Smith finished T25, but now they’re in their comfort zone, playing the kind of courses they great up playing, the kind of courses they love to play.

The Grange is set up to be fast and firm, and the windy conditions are only going to make it firmer and faster. That’s perfect for Ripper GC, and could pose a problem for players like Surratt who might not have played a ton of this style of golf.

It’s setting up perfectly to be a must watch event for the third consecutive year, as no fanbase has embraced their local team like the Australians. If they’re contending for the team victory come Sunday afternoon, it’s going to be chaos on the course.