Southern Guards face the tricky challenge of being the hometown favorites

The goal, of course, is to celebrate a trophy – or perhaps two – on Sunday. But from Louis Oosthuizen ’s perspective, his Southern Guards GC team has already posted a victory simply by bringing LIV Golf to their home country.

Oosthuizen, captain of the all-South African club, joined LIV Golf in 2022 as one of its original members and has been pushing ever since to host a tournament, confident that his sport-loving countrymen would embrace the opportunity to see the league’s marquee names and unique team environment.

Realistically, he thought the 2027 or 2028 LIV Golf season was a more likely timeframe. But thanks to the government’s enthusiastic support along with the participation of lifestyle estate Steyn City as the tournament location, his team’s dream came together fast and furious in less than 12 months.

So here we are this week at LIV Golf South Africa, with ticket sales approaching 100 000, putting it on track to become the biggest golf tournament ever held in the country.

That’s why whatever the Southern Guards achieve in the four-day competition starting with Thursday’s first round is essentially a bonus.

“Obviously, I think us four would love to perform well,” Oosthuizen said while sitting with his teammates – Dean Burmester, Branden Grace and Charl Schwartzel – during a pre-tournament press conference. “We'd love to play well. But I think the bigger picture is getting the tournament here. The bigger picture for me is that the four of us really enjoy this week, what everyone has done with the team behind the scenes, the LIV guys and everyone that was involved. What we've done in achieving and getting this tournament here was a massive goal of ours.

“I know when we step on the golf course, it will be all down to business and we want to play well but to be honest with you, I just want to enjoy this week. I want to take everything in.”

Oosthuizen is one of two members of his team to have won a major, claiming the 2010 Open Championship at St Andrews. The other one is Schwartzel, who won the Masters the next year in dramatic fashion with birdies on his final four holes. The Johannesburg native was asked about where this week’s tournament ranks in terms of career highlights.

“Winning the Masters will always be the biggest event, most proudest moment of my career,” Schwartzel said. “But this is in a different light. This is something that was always way off, a dream when LIV started, to be able to play a LIV event in South Africa. For it to have happened at this sort of biggest stage is, as a South African, a very proud moment.”

For the South African foursome, promoting the tournament via off-site appearances, fan engagements and sponsorship meet-and-greets while also prepping and competing for their most coveted title during the regular season will require a delicate balancing act.

Fortunately, another team in the league can offer guidance in that specific area. Cameron Smith and his Ripper GC deal with the same issues during their home event, LIV Golf Adelaide, the league’s most-attended tournament and the standard for what other LIV Golf tournaments aspire to deliver.

In 2023, the Rippers were seemingly everywhere in Adelaide, appreciative of the support they received. But it left them exhausted once the tournament began, and the Australians eventually finished eighth, shooting a collective 31-under, 16 shots behind the team winners 4Aces GC. Smith finished fourth individually but none of his other teammates finished inside the top 20.

In their next visit in 2024, the Rippers vowed to not wear themselves out prior to the opening round, instead refocusing their efforts on claiming hardware. It paid off in the final round when the won the team title in LIV Golf’ first-ever team playoff against their Southern Hemisphere rivals, the South Africans. Both teams shot 53-under to make the play-off – a 22-stroke improvement for the Rippers.

Oosthuizen picked the brain of Smith in the lead-up to South Africa, obtaining some guidance on how to balance promotion v competition. The Southern Guards participated in much of the team’s social media content last week – you may have seen their “Rhino Jive” dance clips – and some of their pre-tournament obligations were rearranged to give them additional practice time at Steyn City on Wednesday.

“We knew this week was going to be tough,” Oosthuizen said. “I spoke to Cam about it on his first experience and could see how much it took out of them. Performance-level, they weren’t great that year and the next year they were really good. I think we’ll learn from this week as well.”

That doesn’t mean the Southern Guards have resigned themselves to a low-place finish this week, although certainly other teams enter on better form.

With Ripper winning the first two tournaments, followed by 4Aces GC winning the last two, those two teams have set the early pace. Defending LIV Golf Team Champions Legion XIII, captained by Jon Rahm, have finished on the podium in the last three tournaments. Since joining the league in 2024 as its first expansion team, Legion XIII has never gone five consecutive tournaments without a victory; LIV Golf South Africa is the fifth tournament this season.

But the South Africans have also been knocking on the door, finishing fourth, fourth and fifth in the last three starts. Perhaps their vast edge in experience in South Africa combined with the boisterous support they will receive this week will pay dividends on Sunday.

“We've been very consistent this year,” Schwartzel said. “We haven't had a podium but it's been fourths and fifths. I think this tournament from a team point of view, to play with these three guys here, I think this week somehow the team aspect is going to mean a little bit more.

Added Grace: “Maybe this is all it needs, coming home, being in front of your home fans, being comfortable and just having all our friends and family here. Like Louis said, sometimes just being relaxed and having a good time is all it needs. I think everybody is in for a big treat this week.”

And if the Southern Guards do happen to end up on the top of the team podium Sunday night at Steyn City? You can bet the Rhino Jive will be part of the celebration.

“A Sunday night thing after about 14 brandy and Cokes,” joked Oosthuizen. “We’ll do it properly then.”

The Club at Steyn City, a Jack Nicklaus-designed championship layout in the Highveld region just north of Johannesburg, makes history this week as the venue for LIV Golf's first-ever event on the continent of Africa.

Located within the expansive Steyn City lifestyle estate, the course is a par-71 course measuring 7 557 yards. Although the course will offer plenty of birdies, players who aren’t accustomed to playing in the region will need to account for multiple factors to succeed at Steyn City.

The thick Kikuyu grass at The Club at Steyn City will stand as the biggest challenge players will face this week. A dense, warm-season turf native to the region and common on South African courses, Kikuyu covers the fairways and the rough. On the fairways, the golf ball sits high for clean, solid strikes.

"With these fairways, I think the main thing is that the ball sits up so high, you do get a bit more of a solid strike, so irons can go a little bit further,” said Rahm.

The Kikuyu on the fairway, however, isn’t what will give some players nightmares this week. The Kikuyu rough has been grown thick and has a lot of “grab” on the golf club, which kills spin, restricts distance on recoveries and creates unpredictable lies. This will make greenside scrambling difficult and offer trouble to those who are errant off the tee. Bump-and-run shots will be virtually impossible, as the spongy Kikuyu will cause the ball to come out dead.

Even the player who has arguably the best short game in the world respects the challenge of playing out of Kikuyu rough. "The rough out here, I was around the chipping green yesterday. It was about six inches long, I could barely get it out,” said Smith.

Smith’s teammate, Lucas Herbert, has experience playing in South Africa. “This is my fourth time,” he said, “so I've kind of got a bit of an inside track as to how to prep for South African courses. We're playing on Kikuyu grass here, so it's a slightly different preparation around the greens. You have to get used to that."

Legion XIII’s Tom McKibbin, despite being one of the league’s youngest players, is well traveled. The 23-year-old has made six DP World Tour starts in South Africa and finished in the top 25 on four occasions.

“(Kikuyu) is obviously a very different type of grass to hit off,” McKibbin said. “Hopefully knowing that I've played on it so many times and I know what I like and dislike about it, sort of hitting off some of these lies, hopefully I can use that to my advantage a little bit and hopefully have a good week.”

Players like Herbert and McKibbin may have played on the South African Kikuyu a handful of times but Oosthuizen, Burmester, Schwartzel and Grace learned how to play golf on it and spent the formative years of developing their game mastering its quirkiness. This should create a significant home field advantage this week for the Southern Guards GC quartet.

"We grew up with Kikuyu grass,” Grace said. “The rest of the field has probably never even seen it the way that we know it. But yeah, it's immaculate. It's in awesome condition."

Burmester explained the value of hitting the fairway to avoid the Kikuyu rough: "Branden and I played three holes (Monday) just quickly and I hit it a foot into the rough on 10 and Branden was a yard into the rough on 10 and we're both carrying 7-woods this week because of the rough and neither of us had a chance of getting it anywhere near that green.”

"Bryson (DeChambeau) hasn't felt the Kikuyu grass yet,” added Schwartzel with a smile.

The other main challenge players will face this week is the altitude. At around 4 430 feet above sea level in the Highveld plateau, the thinner air provides noticeable extra carry distance – typically 10-15% more distance than sea-level conditions. While it might seem as though players can just account for the added distance, it's not quite that simple. The altitude doesn’t just shorten effective yardage; it also alters club selection, reduces spin rates and requires recalibrated trajectories. And that’s before you factor in the multitude of elevation changes at Steyn City.

Herbert explained the complicated equation: "The altitude here, the ball is going to go a little bit further, so just dialing that in. It's just a little different for every player. It depends how high you hit it, depends how much you spin the golf ball. Those are the adjustments that you've got to make. I’ve got to do some work with FlightScopes and TrackMan and that kind of thing to figure out how far clubs are going."

Although playing at altitude creates challenges, it also is conducive to making plenty of birdies with the further carry distance. "At altitude it also plays a little bit shorter than the distance will say on the scorecard,” noted Rahm. “You're going to have to expect some low scores unless we get some really heavy wind. Power and birdies is what you need."

"Altitude is going to help us obviously hit it farther and carry it longer distances,” added DeChambeau, last week’s winner in Hong Kong. “There are areas where you can absolutely smoke it off the tee and give yourself a short wedge in.”

McKibbin shared that he is aiming to make things a bit simpler this week and not overthink his adjustments. "The last couple of times I've been here, I sort of went back to making it a little bit simpler ... with all the different variables, with the grass and the altitude, it can become quite confusing and you can make it quite sort of a math equation ... I'm trying to make it as simple as possible and trying to make as normal golf as I can.”

Despite efforts to toughen Steyn City, Oosthuizen knows the scoring will still be plentiful. “Definitely narrowed a lot of fairways and grew the rough quite a bit,” he said. “But there’s still going to be lots of birdies out there. We just tried to make it a little bit tougher.”

And make it less of a bomber’s paradise. Said Schwartzel of his captain: “He wanted to give 57 guys a chance to win this tournament. You don't want to take 30% of the field out.”

The Highveld altitude boosting distance with several gettable holes on the scorecard should produce plenty of red numbers. For the 90 000-plus fans expected across four days – most of whom are seeing a LIV Golf event live for the first time – those birdies and low scores will fuel the electric atmosphere South African crowds are known for, making this historic African debut at Steyn City a tournament to remember.