PLAYER SPOTLIGHTS<\/p>\n
Martin Kaymer: Kaymer showed signs of a resurgence last year in Virginia, where he contended for most of the event before eventually finishing T8, his best-ever LIV Golf finish. After reaching the No. 1 spot in the world rankings in 2011, the German has faced plenty of ups and downs. If he can remain healthy and continue to improve as he did last season, he has plenty of strong seasons ahead of him.<\/p>\n
Adrian Meronk: Meronk won the first LIV Golf event of the season in 2025 but was mostly boom or bust for the entirety of the season. The Pole is arguably the Cleeks best player and will need to be more consistent in 2026 for the team to avoid the bottom fourth of the team standings. Meronk had an active offseason and should be ready to defend his LIV Golf Riyadh title.<\/p>\n
Richard Bland:\u00a0Bland continues to defy father time and put up good results year after year. However, at this stage of his career, the 52-year-old will need his teammates to contribute a bit more if the team is to be competitive going forward.<\/p>\n
Victor Perez:\u00a0Perez is a solid addition to the team and brings stellar iron play along with winning experience to the Cleeks. Last year, Kjettrup failed to earn points, making it difficult for them to keep up in the standings. Perez should be a steady point earner next season and take some pressure off his teammates who were forced to overcompensate for a lack of production for much of 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WHAT THE STATS SUGGEST<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Cleeks will need to improve a great deal in every stat category to be competitive in 2026.\u00a0The addition of Perez will undoubtedly help, but\u00a0they\u2019ll\u00a0need an improvement from\u00a0their\u00a0whole roster to be competitive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WHERE CAN THEY IMPROVE?<\/p>\n
The Cleeks ranked 9th or worse in every major statistical category last season. The ranked last in driving distance and scrambling, and 11th in putting, birdies made and fairways hit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
KEY QUOTES\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martin Kaymer on the recruitment of Victor Perez:\u00a0\u201cWell,\u00a0first of all, we are\u00a0very happy\u00a0to have Victor.\u00a0We approached it a little bit\u00a0differently. We worked with a stats team together, so we had a few players from different tours were interested in joining our team, so we worked together with a stats team in order to make a leaderboard, just to have some facts, and then once we figured out who was No. 1, 2 and 3, we went with personalities, characters, do they fit to our team, can they include themselves nicely, and then all of a sudden we got a call from Victor that he was interested in joining our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Victor Perez on joining LIV Golf:\u00a0\u201cJoining Cleeks Golf Club for the 2026 season\u00a0feels like joining\u00a0golf\u2019s next great chapter, as this club continues to push boundaries, perform at the highest level, and bring fresh energy and vision to the game. The sport\u2019s growth has been incredible, and LIV Golf\u2019s innovation and energy are driving it forward. I’m excited to be part of that momentum and can\u2019t wait to get started in Riyadh.”<\/p>\n
Richard Bland on his playing future: \u201cI want to retire from the game. I don\u2019t want the game to retire me. I\u2019m hoping I\u2019m good for next year. And as long as I feel like I\u2019m competitive, I\u2019ll keep playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE<\/p>\n
Victor Perez is a strong addition who will immediately make the team more competitive in 2026. The Cleeks, however, are starting from way behind the top teams in the league and will need Kaymer, Meronk and Bland to all perform better than last season if they are to make a significant jump in the standings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THREE BOLD PREDICTIONS<\/p>\n
Victor Perez\u00a0will lead the team in points.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martin Kaymer will have his career-best LIV Golf finish. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Richard Bland will finish in the Lock Zone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLAYER SPOTLIGHTS Martin Kaymer: Kaymer showed signs of a resurgence last year in Virginia, where he contended for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-449488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}