LIV Golf Hong Kong preview: field, betting odds, tee times, and predictions

LIV Golf heads to Hong Kong for the first time this week. It’s a good time for golf fans in China, with the DP World Tour due to visit in May for the Volvo China Open, which will be a European Tour event for the first time since 2019.

The LIV Golf schedule is blank for three weeks following LIV Golf Hong Kong, presumably to give its stars time to get their games ready for the Masters. LIV Golf Miami comes next, the week before Augusta, and then there’s another three weeks without a LIV event before it heads to Adelaide.

Like all standard events in the LIV Golf schedule, LIV Hong Kong will be played over 54 holes across three days, with a shotgun start each day and no cut. For more information, check out our LIV Golf: Everything You Need to Know page.

The field will be made up of 54 players, which includes the 13 four-man teams or ‘franchises’, plus two wildcard players. Hudson Swafford has signed to take a wildcard spot for the entire 2024 season, while Anthony Kim will take the final spot as a solo player. The 38-year-old made his long-awaited and much-storied return to golf after more than a decade at last week’s LIV Golf Jeddah. He was unsurprisingly pretty rusty, finishing on +16 for the three rounds, 11 shots behind Swafford in second-last.

The team-assigned players compete in two competitions simultaneously – an individual event and a team event. Every stroke counts in the individual event, whereas in the team event, only the combined scores of the team’s top three players count for rounds 1 & 2, with all four scores counting in the final round of each event.

Jon Rahm is the bookies’ favorite to win LIV Golf Hong Kong at 11/2, closely followed by Joaquin Niemann at 15/2.

LIV Golf Hong Kong takes place at the Hong Kong Golf Club, which has hosted the Hong Kong Open for many years. The LIV action will take place on a composite course of holes from the ‘New’ and ‘Eden’ courses.

Cam Smith finished runner-up in last year’s Hong Kong Open, although his current form of T8, T15, T41 isn’t setting the world alight.

Joaquin Niemann is LIV Golf’s form man, having won two of this season’s three tournaments, including last week’s LIV Golf Jeddah.

But I fancy Jon Rahm to break his LIV Golf duck this week. The Spaniard has finished T3, 8, 5 in his first three LIV events and will be looking to get his game in peak shape as he prepares to defend his green jacket at next month’s Masters.

Like all regular season events, LIV Golf Hong Kong has a $25 million purse, with $20 million assigned for the individual competition and $5 million for the team competition.

The individual winner receives $4 million, scaling down to $50,000 for those finishing at the wrong end of the leaderboard.

Only the top three teams receive prize money in each event. The winning team gets $3 million, with $1.5 million and $500k for the second and third-placed teams respectively.

Fans in over 180 global territories can watch coverage of LIV Golf free of charge via the LIV Golf Plus app. LIV Golf Plus is available for download on iOS, Android, FireTV, and on LIVGolfPlus.com. Search for: “LIV Golf Plus”.

UK viewers can watch the action for free on the LIV Golf YouTube channel.

US viewers can catch all the action on the CW App & LIV Golf+ App.

Rob has been a writer and editor for over 15 years, covering all manner of subjects for leading magazines and websites.

He has previously been Features Editor of Today’s Golfer magazine and Digital Editor of todays-golfer.com, and held roles at FHM, Men’s Running, Golf World, and MAN Magazine.

You can follow him on YouTube where – depending on what day of the week it is – he’ll either be trying his best to get his handicap down to scratch or shoving his clubs in a cupboard, never to be seen again.

Rob is a member at Royal North Devon, England’s oldest golf course, where he plays off a three-handicap.