GOLFZON Tour’s grand finale: Team Los Angeles defeats Team Detroit to win $150K

This article was produced in partnership with GOLFZON.

GOLFZON Tour’s 12-team, simulator-golf match-play competition has crowned its first champion: Team Los Angeles defeated Team Detroit in front of a live audience at the PGA Show in Orlando to claim the $150,000 grand prize.

LA’s road to to the finals was highlighted by big wins in the early rounds. They were among only four teams who earned a bye into the quarter-final round in initial seeding. Then, in their first match against Team Minneapolis, Team Los Angeles won 5-and-4. In the semi-finals against Team Tulsa, they prevailed 3-and-2.

That brought LA to the final match against Team Detroit, and LA’s three youngest team members — Shreyas Kumaresh, 21, Jason Bustos, 20, and Michael Ordona, 23 — brought home the victory for the five-player squad.

Check out a full match recap below.

What is GOLFZON Tour?

GOLFZON Tour is a new league in which regional teams of five players each from 12 selected GOLFZON host facilities (nine are in the U.S., the others are from London, Toronto and Mexico) compete against each other in a series of matches, with one team earning the grand-prize payout.

In this single-elimination bracket play tournament, the teams select three of their players to compete head-to-head by linking their simulators together over the Internet in a match-play format, with two of the best three scores for each team counting on each hole. Female competitors play 85 percent of the yardage of their male counterparts.

If, after 18 holes, there’s a tie, the match goes into a sudden-death playoff where all three players’ scores count. The first team to score lower than the other on a hole wins.

GOLFZON Tour Final Match Recap: Team Los Angeles vs. Team Detroit

The GOLFZON Tour final matchup was played at an iconic venue: Bay Hill, an annual host of the PGA Tour’s Arnold Palmer Invitational. For the first time, the teams competed against each other in person on the same simulator, and instead of only the top two of three scores counting for the team score, all three players’ scores from each team counted in the final.

Team Los Angeles asserted their dominance quickly, taking control of the match with wins on the first six holes. It was a tough start for Detroit, who found themselves in a seemingly insurmountable hole right off the bat — and in front of a live audience, too.

While Team Detroit did manage to put a couple of wins on the board, the deficit proved too much to overcome, and Team Los Angeles claimed a 7-and-5 victory on the 13th hole.

With the win, the five members of Team Los Angeles took home $30,000 apiece.

“I’m getting emotional just thinking about it,” said Team LA member Michael Ordona, 23, who got engaged in December. “We hoped to get married this year and winning gives us the money to pay for it.”

“We all wanted to get it done for him,” LA teammate Shreyas Kumaresh added. “This win is for him.”

The Teams

The 12 teams that competed in this edition of GOLFZON Tour are:

East Division

Detroit – Tee Times – ELIMINATED (Final)
London – The Golf Rooms – ELIMINATED (Match 3)
Louisville – Tee It Up Golf USA – ELIMINATED (Match 1)
New York City – Golfzon Social – ELIMINATED (Match 7)
Orlando – Golfzon Leadbetter – ELIMINATED (Match 9)
Toronto – Golfplay – ELIMINATED (Match 5)

West Division

Chicago – The Green – ELIMINATED (Match 2)
Houston – The Daly Round – ELIMINATED (Match 6)
Los Angeles – Golf Envy – WINNERS
Mexico – Mulligan’s Monterrey – ELIMINATED (Match 4)
Minneapolis – Element Indoor Golf – ELIMINATED (Match 8)
Tulsa – BirdieBay – ELIMINATED (Match 10)

Watch the action

You can watch all the matches in their entirety on GOLFZON’s YouTube page. To learn more about GOLFZON Tour — and view the full match-play bracket — click here.