Dallas preview: 4Aces GC face RangeGoats GC at Team Championship
Team: 4Aces Golf Club
Season-long team standings: 10th
Friday opponent: No. 9 RangeGoats GC
Fun team stat: 4Aces GC is fourth in Scrambling (65.63%) and has saved par or better when missing the green 504 times, the second-most of any team in 2024.
Preview
The 2024 regular season wasn’t one for the record books for 4Aces Golf Club. The team has been historically dominant since its inception on the LIV Golf League and was one to always watch, no matter the event or course layout. But even though the results weren’t great during the regular season, there is still time to end the year on a high note.
4Aces GC, the No. 10 seed, will face No. 9 seed RangeGoats GC on Friday at the LIV Golf Dallas Team Championship. It might prove to be the most entertaining matchup of the day, pitting two teams with massive star power against each other while featuring some players who have previously played for the opposing team. In short, the action will be hot at Maridoe Golf Club.
“We haven’t had the best of years but I think our team is still strong,” Captain Dustin Johnson said. “It’s match play, so we are a difficult matchup. Obviously the RangeGoats are, too.”
Here’s how Friday’s quarterfinals will work: The 10 teams that didn’t earn a bye will compete in a shotgun start, and it will consist of 40 players. For each head-to-head team matchup, three matches (two singles, one foursomes/alternate shot) will take place. Matches will be played until a winner is determined and each match winner will receive one point. The team earning two points will advance to Saturday’s semifinals.
In singles, Johnson will face Peter Uihlein while Patrick Reed will face Thomas Pieters. In foursomes, it will be Harold Varner III/Pat Perez vs. Bubba Watson/Matthew Wolff.
“I was going to play singles,” Johnson said. “The last couple of years we’ve put P-Reed out in singles, and he’s a very good singles player, very good match play player. I felt like Pat and Harold were really kind of the obvious choice to play foursomes. I think their games complement each other. I think they’re going to be a really tough match. Obviously, I’ve played a lot of golf with both of them this year and they’re playing well. If they can get it together tomorrow, we can win all three matches.”
The first goal for 4Aces GC, the 2022 Team Champions, will be to survive and advance. And while being a lower seed is foreign to the team, success at the Team Championship is not. 4Aces GC won the 2022 Team Championship, and in 2023 it finished the regular season No. 1 in the season-long team standings and finished fourth. Three of the four players from last season remain, and Reed and Perez have showed the ability over and over to show up big in the biggest moments.
For his part, Johnson will get his team focused while leading the way on and off the course. He finished a team-high 14th in the final individual standings and won at LIV Golf Las Vegas.
Reed had a slow start to the season but posted two top-four finishes in the second half of the year, which puts him in a positive position in his home state of Texas. Perez has had an up-and-down year but has thrived at the Team Championship, most notably two years ago in Miami when he shot 2-under to be the key player to help 4Aces GC earn the Team Championship title.
In order to achieve its goal in Dallas, 4Aces GC will need to get a big week from Varner III. He has struggled at times in 2024, but also stepped up big when the pressure was on. He finished T13 last week in Chicago as his 2025 eligibility was in question and finished in the Open Zone.
As for the venue, Maridoe GC should be a good fit. It measures 7,438 yards and plays as a par 72, so while not overly long, it has enough distance to challenge average-length players who will have to rely on a deft short game.