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JOHANNESBURG \u2014 Dean Burmester was wondering what a lot of South Africans were wondering at some point this week. He was down near the first green, talking to Jon Rahm, gazing back up the hill at the grandstand they had just teed off from.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSmall taste of the Ryder Cup,\u201d he said to Rahm. \u201cThat\u2019s about as good as it will ever get for me. Pretty special.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The point was not the comparison, nor the fact that Rahm added some context about crowd size. Burmester didn\u2019t even know the TV mics were capturing the convo. The point was more that Burmester was dreaming a bit. Levitating mentally. He will never play a Ryder Cup and he knows it. At this rate, he won\u2019t play a Presidents Cup either. But was LIV Golf\u2019s visit to his home country a little bit like the Ryder Cup<\/a> for the home team? Yeah, it was a little bit like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n Burmester was equal parts mascot and player this week, flagging approach shots as often as he thumped his chest, danced for the delirious crowd and twirled on tee boxes, his arms extended wide like Maximus Meridius in \u201cGladiator.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a full week of that from the 36-year-old journeyman, mainly because the LIV template for massive international events worked again, just like it has in Australia the last few years. More than 100,000 tickets were sold, here in the major, global metro of Johannesburg, and they had a single patriotic squad to cheer for.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got a bit of a tan from taking my hat off all the time,\u201d Burmester said in the moments after it finished. \u201cIt\u2019s just something \u2014 I wanted to do well for the fans and honored to show my appreciation wherever I went. It\u2019s amazing to have that kind of support, and they\u2019re shouting down the fairways and on the greens and stuff like that, and I just wanted to say thank you. That\u2019s basically what I wanted to do. The more noise they could make, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n And noise they made.\u00a0<\/p>\n Does South Africa party<\/a> harder than Australia? LIV Golf wanted to test that theory. Its events mimic festivals more than anything else these days. At least the ones that can guarantee attendance records. The template is obvious: bring as many people in for golf, musical acts or sunshine and beer \u2014 whichever they want most \u2014 spread \u2018em out, pump \u2018em up with the Beastie Boys and sic \u2018em on the traditionally quiet norms of the game. It\u2019s gonna feel different. It\u2019s gonna cost a ton of money. It\u2019s gonna stand out if golf is good, too. Was this the first time Burmester found thousands upon thousands of fans walking with his group? Maybe! And maybe not. He\u2019s been around the block. But we know how he felt about this.<\/p>\n \u201cGreatest week of my life,\u201d he said. And that was after his team settled for second place. His teammate Branden Grace missed a birdie putt that would have pushed the Southern Guards into a playoff for the team competition. Considering the rain-soaked course and the liquified nature of the crowd, it\u2019s maybe better it didn\u2019t happen. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n When asked how Sunday night would go for LIV\u2019s South African players, who had been promised the biggest party in the country if they won, Louis Oosthuizen said he was headed for bed. They were all tired<\/em>. There\u2019s your difference between winning and losing.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m ready for a brandy and Coke,\u201d Burmester said, during what had to be his 30th interview of the week. The impromptu press conference was held on the 1st tee box, with countrymen surrounding them from above one final time. <\/p>\n \u201cEach of us got to tee off on this 1st tee here, and each of us walked off saying exactly the same thing: we couldn\u2019t feel anything. It was the greatest thing I\u2019ve ever felt on the golf course. I\u2019m just proud to be South African; that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n JOHANNESBURG \u2014 Dean Burmester was wondering what a lot of South Africans were wondering at some point this week. He was down near the first green, talking to Jon Rahm, gazing back up the hill at the grandstand they had just teed off from.\u00a0 \u201cSmall taste of the Ryder Cup,\u201d he said to Rahm. \u201cThat\u2019s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/\u2018Greatest-week-of-my-life.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24794,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24792\/revisions\/24794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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