American golfer Dustin Johnson won the most dramatic LIV Golf Invitational event to date with a 30 foot eagle putt on the first hole of a three-man playoff on Sunday. This victory is Johnson’s first in the LIV Golf Invitationals and it helped his team, the 4 Aces, to a third consecutive team win.
Johnson shot an impressive five under par 65 on Sunday to get into the playoff with Anirban Lahiri (Ind) and Joaquin Niemann (Chile), both of whom were making their LIV Golf debuts. However, a slow finish on the second nine kept the two-time major champion from winning his first LIV Golf event in regulation. He made par at his last five holes, including the relatively easy par five 18th.
Lee Westwood (Eng), who started on hole four, in this shotgun start format, made a bogey on his final hole, the par 4 third hole to miss the playoff by one. Cameron Smith (Aus), making his LIV Golf debut, also missed the playoff by a single stroke after a seven under par 63 in his final round.
Johnson said of his victory and his winning putt, ‘Yeah it was going a little fast, but it was a good line. I felt like I played really well all week, I felt like I got some unlucky breaks here the first time around. It owed me one, and I got it.’
In the Team Event, the 4 Aces GC, beat the Iron Heads GC and held off both the Crushers GC and Majesticks GC and win their third win in four tournaments. The four man Team of Johnson, Talor Gooch, Pat Perez and Patrick Reed will split the $3 million first place winnings, just as they did at both LIV Bedminister and LIV Portland.
The inaugural LIV Golf season is now officially halfway over as the new tour starts to look toward its season ending championship in Miami at the end of October. Between now and the $50 million team finale in Miami, LIV will travel to Chicago (September 16th -18th), Bangkok (October 7th – 9th) and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (October 14th -16th).
