Oosthuizen’s Stingers advance to Championship Finals

Stimpmeter · August 24, 2025, 8:15pm

Stinger GC captain Louis Oosthuizen kept the faith with his hottest player, Legion XIII captain Jon Rahm defeated his good friend and Crushers GC Captain Bryson DeChambeau justified his lineup decision.

Now their respective teams will compete for LIV Golf’s biggest team prize in Sunday’s Championship Finals of the Michigan Team Championship.

Torque GC Captain Joaquin Niemann, the five-time tournament winner this year, was expected to be difficult for the Stingers’ Dean Burmester, who won two weeks ago in Chicago and was tabbed by Oosthuizen for No 1 singles.

Burmester was 4 up through 12 holes, but Niemann showed his championship mettle, clawing back into the match with three consecutive birdies down the stretch. Burmester responded with two matching pars, then won the final hole with a birdie to finish 2 up for the deciding point of the matchup.

“I knew I had to still hit good shots,” Burmester said. “He’s a class player and he proved it.”

Oosthuizen and his longtime partner Charl Schwartzel supplied the other point with a 2 & 1 win over Torque’s Sebastián Muñoz and Carlos Ortiz, two top-10 players this season.

A year ago at the Team Championship in Dallas, Stinger lost in the semi-finals, then shot the lowest cumulative score of any team on the final day to finish fifth. If that happens this Sunday, they’ll win the Team Championship. They enter as the lowest-seeded team among the three at No 7; Legion XIII and the Crushers finished 1-2 in the season-long points race.

“We all play to be in this situation, to have a shot at it tomorrow,” Oosthuizen said. “It’s going to be go big or go home. We’re going to try our best to upset everyone.”

Legion XIII, Crushers and Stinger each emerged with 2-1 wins in Saturday’s match-play semi-finals. All but one of the nine matches in the Championship bracket reached at least the 17th hole, with all three of the Crushers’ matches against Brooks Koepka’s Smash GC going the full distance.

The action was tense and full of drama – and Sunday’s final day of the 2025 LIV Golf season offers the same potential as the format shifts to stroke play at The Cardinal at Saint John’s, with all four scores counting for each team.

“These teams up here are incredible teams, incredible golfers,” DeChambeau said of the final three. “It’s going to be a tough test tomorrow because it’s scoring conditions out there for sure.”

Rahm, the two-time Individual Champion, has a chance to end the season with the Team Championship after he defeated HyFlyers GC Captain Phil Mickelson 2 & 1, while his young partnership of Tom McKibbin and Caleb Surratt posted their second straight foursomes win.

It was an emotional victory for Rahm, who attended Mickelson’s alma mater Arizona State and considers him a mentor.

“He’s such a good friend. You never want to beat a friend,” Rahm said. “In a weird way, it feels good because Phil and I have a fun rivalry going. It’s a weird feeling but I’m proud of myself and how I fought today.”

DeChambeau opted to take on Smash GC’s Talor Gooch instead of Koepka in singles. Gooch won LIV Golf Andalucía and led his team in points this season, but the decision still generated plenty of scrutiny.

In the end, it was the winning call. DeChambeau made eight birdies to Gooch’s six and needed a birdie on the final hole to win 1 up. Meanwhile, Lahiri held tough against Koepka, who required a late birdie of his own to win 1 up. Foursomes partners Paul Casey and Charles Howell III supplied the other point for the Crushers.

“Look, I could have gone up against him,” DeChambeau said of Koepka, the five-time Major winner and five-time LIV Golf champion. “Brooks is a great fighter, and I would have loved to have played against him, but I felt like from a matchup perspective, Talor was going to be a more difficult force today.”

The Crushers, meanwhile, have a chance to become the first LIV Golf team to win two Team Championships, having claimed their first title two years ago in Miami. Last year, they were upset by the Iron Heads in the Semifinals, ending their chance to repeat.

“It would mean a lot for our team,” DeChambeau said of a second win. “Hopefully we end on a high note.”

No team has been better this season than Legion XIII, which has the league’s lowest stroke average and the league’s best performance in the final round when the stakes are highest. Legion XIII won four times this season and have won eight of their first 27 tournaments since joining LIV Golf as its first expansion team last year.

“Whatever we’ve done until right now doesn’t matter anymore,” Rahm said. “Tomorrow, you have 18 holes to prove it again, and that’s all we have. It’s the same thing for all of us. It’s been a great season – and now it’s time to hopefully finish it.”

Photo: Jan Kruger/Getty Images

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