Dean Burmester played his first DP World Tour tournament in South Africa in December 2010. It was an Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek. He missed the cut with rounds of 77 and 82 strokes. That second card is the highest he has ever signed in his country on the European circuit. This Thursday, 15 years later, he has started his 49th DP World Tour tournament in South Africa. He shot 65 in the first round of his national Open at Stellenbosch and is at the top of the leaderboard tied with Alex del Rey, Joe Dean, and Oliver Lindell.
Burmester has always been a very powerful player. His sensational hitting made him formidable, but at the same time, he was very inconsistent. Capable of the best and the worst. He shot very low rounds. The low sixties would fall from his hands, but there wasn’t a week where he didn’t slip with a high seventies, especially on the weekend.
The results are there. In his first 36 DP World Tour tournaments in South Africa, Burmester had missed 15 cuts, nearly 50 percent. He also had a victory at the Tschwane Open in 2017, two other top 4s in the same tournament, and a couple of top 10s in the South African Open. It was absolute inconsistency, but leaning more towards the lows than the highs. He struggled to get results. Yes, yes, there’s Burmester, but we’ll see if he holds up.
This trend changed one day. It was when Burmester became the terror of Africa. It can be perfectly pinpointed in time. It happened on December 6, 2020. The final round of the South African Open was being played at the Gary Player Country Club. Again, he had started the week like a shot, with rounds of 67 and 69, but two 71s on the weekend relegated him to fourth position. Once again, he was left at the gates. However, surely without knowing it, that day everything changed. Burmester became a different player. He took off the jagged teeth jacket and put on the consistency one.
Since then, the LIV Golf player has played twelve DP World Tour tournaments in South Africa and his record is as follows: he has made all the cuts, won three, and achieved six top 7s. In other words, one in every two times he finishes among the top seven since 2020. It sounds quick.
This week he has started very well in Stellenbosch. Playing in the afternoon, he delivered a score of 65 and is already in the lead. A few years ago, the general feeling when seeing Burmester at the top was, well, we’ll see when he falls. Now it’s the opposite. Watch out, he’s already there, and we’ll see if anyone can knock him down. So, from today he has become the big favourite to win.
As for the afternoon, the discreet performance of Patrick Reed (+1) was surprising, not so much for the result itself, but for the play around the green and in the wedge shots where he usually excels as a master. Today he wasn’t sharp. He couldn’t adapt to the South African kikuyu grass. But still, it was the performance of Charl Schwartzel (+7). Tomorrow he will need a miracle to make a cut that has provisionally been set at PAR, with many chances of being +1.
Regarding the Spanish players in the afternoon, none could keep up with the good pace set by Alex del Rey (-5) and Ángel Ayora (-3). Rafa Cabrera Bello (PAR) is the only one currently within the cut. Meanwhile, Jorge Campillo (+2) and Manu Elvira (+4) (without birdies) will have to fight to play the weekend.
