The Jamaica Golf Association (JGA) has joined forces with Legend Beer to introduce a tournament with a format not played in Jamaica for decades. It’s called Legends and Supastars and is based on match play. The two-day competition will begin at Caymanas Golf Club in St Catherine on Saturday and end on Sunday at Constant Spring Golf Club in Kingston.

Saturday will see eight teams of four players with varying handicaps across four levels, from lowest to highest, playing three rounds of five holes each on a round-robin basis in the groups. At the end of the day the top two players in each group will be placed in the ‘Legends’ group and the other two players will be placed in ‘Supastars’, resulting in reconstituted eight groups of four.

Sunday will feature knockout matches only. It will start with 32 players in eight groups of four but only 16 players will continue after their five-hole round-four matches. They will continue to play knockout matches until there is a Legends winner and a Supastars winner.

Scoring will be based on head-to-head results — one point for a win, half a point for a tie, and zero for a loss in the round-robin stage. Points will be the same in the knockout stage except that in the event of a draw, the first player to win a hole wins the match.

JGA President Jodi Munn-Barrow, who will be playing in the tournament, welcomed the introduction of the new format.

“[I am] very excited to restart a match play event. It’s a new format of match play over five holes, with qualifiers on Saturday and then a knockout round and finals on Sunday,” she said.

She also welcomed Legend Beer as a sponsor.

“Over the two courses in Kingston [and St Catherine, we are] really thrilled to have Legend Lager on board as a sponsor,” she said. “It’s a new event so we’re just starting out this year and we look forward to bigger and better events on an annual basis.”