One of DeChambeau’s teammates on Crushers GC, Paul Casey, is an Englishman but has a special affinity for South Africa. His dad grew up in Cape Town, and his brother was born in Hillbrow, the inner-city community in Johannesburg that has undergone several substantial transformations. And as Casey revealed after the final round, “The rumors are I was conceived here, but I was apparently born in England. Burmy and those guys always give me a little, hey, if you want to jump teams, come to the Southern Guards. I can be kind of a mascot or something. The half-guy.”
It was the Crushers – the only lineup that has been together longer than the Southern Guards foursome – who rallied in the final round to claim the team title. In the aftermath, even in victory, Casey made it a point to console Oosthuizen and Burmester, hoping to offset their disappointment with words of gratitude for delivering an epic event.
“To see this scene today – actually just all week, the Southern Guards were amazing,” Casey said. “Louis and those guys said, this is what we’re going to do, and then they followed through, and thanks to everybody, the government and the country and the fans to make this what it was.
“This might be better than Adelaide. That might upset some people down in Australia, but those scenes on 18 were just fantastic. Those made the hairs on my neck stand up … That was like a Ryder Cup-type feeling to it, the passion out there, team-against-team kind of thing.”
Ah, yes. Adelaide.
LIV Golf Adelaide has been the benchmark for the league, its most popular tournament, with a record 115,000 fans attending the four rounds last month, the highest total of any golf event held in Australia. When LIV Golf announced less than a year ago that Johannesburg would be on the 2026 schedule, the immediate reaction from the South Africans was to out-do the Australians, continuing the Southern Hemisphere rivalry that extends to all sports, particularly rugby and cricket.