Tied for Gooch on the individual leaderboard is 4Aces GC’s Thomas Detry and RangeGoats GC’s Peter Uihlein. Both shot 3-under 69s after sharing the first-round lead. Kokrak is tied for fourth at 9 under along with Legion XIII Captain Jon Rahm, Torque GC’s Sebastian Munoz and new Ripper GC player Elvis Smylie. The Fireballs GC duo of captain Sergio Garcia and David Puig are tied for eighth at 8 under.
Detry is making his first LIV Golf start and is getting a taste of the simultaneous individual and team competitions this week. The 4Aces have not won since 2023 and are playing with reserve Miguel Tabuena this week, but Detry is leading the charge to end the drought. Captain Dustin Johnson kicked into gear on Thursday with a 5-under 67, while Detry’s fellow Belgian Thomas Pieters added a 68.
“I like to make statements, especially for the first week for me out here,” Detry said. “There’s loads of different things … I’ve played the last 10 years as a pro sort of playing individually, so you never really think about a team.
“I was sort of taking care of my business, and suddenly I saw the leaderboard with the 4Aces popping up, and that sort of reminded me that I was also playing for the team, which is great.”
Uihlein is one of eight players who have started all 51 LIV Golf tournaments. He finished third in the season-long Individual Championship in the inaugural 2022 season and has had multiple chances to claim a tournament title but has been unable to cash in. He hopes this week will be different.
It appears he’ll be chasing just the one trophy, though, as his RangeGoats are 11th on the team leaderboard, 22 strokes off the lead.
“Winning individual – that’s what the goal is to win, and now that we get world ranking points, you can jump up in the OWGR and try and get in the majors,” Uihlein said. “That’s definitely a goal. It would be awesome, right? There’s some unbelievable players out here, and to say you’ve won and beat them definitely would be pretty special.”
One of those players is Gooch, who won three times in 2023 when he won the season-long Individual Championship; he added a fourth tournament title last season. Overall, he’s lifted 13 LIV Golf trophies, tying Rahm for the most of any player in LIV Golf history.
He follows the Rule of 67 – everything takes care of itself by shooting 67 or better – and has already shot two of those scores this week. But he doesn’t know if two more 67s will enable him to lift trophy No. 14 (and possibly 15 if Smash sweeps both trophies).
“I don’t know what the winning score is going to be,” Gooch said. “This is the first time we’ve played 72 (holes), so who knows what it’s going to look like.”