What you need to know about Scottie vs. Rory in the Golf Channel Games

Just when you thought golf's silly season had it all, along comes a new event. On Wednesday, it's the first Golf Channel Games and it will have some serious star power.

World No. 1 and four-time PGA Tour Player of the Year Scottie Scheffler will head up one team while second-ranked Rory McIlroy will captain the other side in the Optum Golf Channel Games.

What is the Golf Channel Games?

The event is a made-for-TV golf outing cooked up by Versant, a new TV company that's made up of several cable channels that were spun off by NBCUniversal.

The tournament is not a stroke-play contest nor will it have a Ryder Cup-style format. Rather, Scottie and Rory will lead their respective teams in a series of challenges.

What is the format for the Golf Channel Games?

The Optum Golf Channel Games will be made up of these challenges:

Timed drive competition

Players compete in head-to-head duels with two minutes on the clock and must combine power and accuracy to launch drives into a scoring grid.

Timed short-game competition

This will be a combination of chipping and putting in which players hit shots from multiple locations around the green before trying to sink putts from varying distances. There will be a 3 minute clock for each of these challenges.

14-club challenge

This will feature two players and one golf bag in a closest-to-the-pin contest from a designated distance in the fairway. All 14 clubs will be available to use, with seven shots per player per side. The catch is, once a club is used, it cannot be used again. The kicker: each team will pick a player to hit a 15th shot left-handed (spoiler: none of the eight participants are left-handed).

Team relay

This will be a four-player, alternate shot format over four holes with players staged on the tee, in the fairway and around the green with a running clock.

Captains challenge

Finally, there will be a 1-on-1 duel between Scheffler and McIlroy with each player hitting from predetermined locations.

Who's playing in the Golf Channel Games?

McIlroy will have Shane Lowry, Luke Donald and Haotong Li on his team.

Scheffler will counter with Keegan Bradley, Sam Burns and Luke Clanton.

Where will the Golf Channel Games be played?

Trump National Golf Club Jupiter in Jupiter, Florida, will host the event.

Where to watch the Golf Channel Games

The event will be live in primetime on Golf Channel and USA Network. The fun starts at 7 p.m. ET. The announcing crew also has some big names.

Keith Mitchell will work as an analyst alongside Golf Channel play-by-play man Steve Sands. Smylie Kaufman, Brad Faxon and Johnson Wagner will be on-course commentators. Wagner will also have pre-and post-show analysis with Anna Jackson, who will anchor studio coverage at Trump National Golf Club Jupiter. In addition, Kai Trump will be on site as a special contributor, participating in challenge tutorials with Wagner as well as conducting the trophy ceremony. A recent signee to the University of Miami, Trump boasts more than 8 million social media followers and YouTube subscribers.

What the captains are saying about the Golf Channel Games?

"The opportunity to showcase our game in a different way. This is an opportunity to do something different, lean into other sports in a way like the NFL Combine, or the 3-point contest in basketball or the Home Run Derby in baseball. It's a chance to try something new, try something different. And I think we've put together a collection of pretty good players, different personalities, different skillsets and I think it's going to be really cool to see us go up against each other in some of these different challenges."

― Rory McIlroy

"I think it's a really fun way to still get out there and compete and I hope it's enjoyable for the fans as well. I think the clock will definitely be a factor in the games and that's something that we're definitely not used to. I'm definitely one of the guys on tour that likes to kind of operate at my own pace and in my own little world, and so it'll be fun to kind of interact and have fun through the competition while also trying to beat the clock."

― Scottie Scheffler

"We have drones with tracers, everything will be traced, we have trackman, we have all the data that you need, so there'll be a ton of technology around it. The whole key to this, and it's one of the reasons why we have Smylie with Scottie's team and Brad Faxon is going to be with Rory's team, is if the players are having fun, then the viewer will have fun. And that's what this is really all about - trying to figure out a way where they are competing against each other but in an enjoyable way."

― Event producer Mark Loomis

Golfweek's Adam Schupak and Beth Ann Nichols contributed to this article.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: What you need to know about Scottie vs. Rory in the Golf Channel Games