LIV Golf star Dan Burmester battled back from a shaky beginning to secure victory in a three-way playoff against Jon Rahm and Josele Ballester at the Chicago event, drawing motivation from his wife’s ultra-marathon achievement.
The 36-year-old claimed his second career individual LIV Golf triumph in Chicago, adding to his Miami victory from April of last year. The South African golfer, who made headlines with a viral incident Down Under last year, defeated 2024 LIV Golf champion Rahm and Ballester after both players failed to convert birdie opportunities from 12 feet on the 18th hole during the playoff.
Burmester collected $4 million for his second LIV Golf championship. He also celebrated team success with Stinger, which captured the team championship by defeating Torque.
The victory proved “emotional,” for Burmester, who revealed he had been wrestling with personal challenges before achieving glory.
His wife’s completion of an ultra marathon in West Virginia served as his driving force. “This has been emotional. Since kind of before Virginia, I’ve been going through a bit of a rough time, personal stuff, and I’ve just been grinding and trying to get better,” he said.
“I think about my kids and my wife back home, and I’m just trying to do the best I can for them. My wife finished an ultra marathon the week of West Virginia.
“That Sunday I was on my phone watching her, and that truly gave me an inspiration to kind of — if she can do that, she can run 90 whatever kilometers in a day, nine and a half hours or whatever it was, then I can do anything.
“Yeah, for me, that was where it’s at. Then after three bogeys in a row to start, I was like, fudge, I don’t know where I’m going. The head was nowhere.
“But I just kept at it, and Jason, my caddie, was just phenomenal. He was just like, we never give up. We’re not going to give up. We’ve been through too much c— to give up.
“That’s what we did. Then I had a chance in regulation. Obviously hit a good putt, lagged it, just to protect my lead, and then to hit that out of the rough and get the right bounce and then roll it in — I watched Jon’s go left. I knew I had the right line, and to roll it in in front of everybody that’s here is amazing.”
Rahm’s loss in Chicago marked another crushing blow for the Spaniard. The former world No. 1 looks set to surrender his LIV title this year.
Joaquin Niemann currently tops the leaderboard and appears destined to claim the 2025 championship. Rahm has struggled to turn his solid showings into victories this season.
Chicago represented the 30-year-old’s nearest miss to claiming a win. The ex-Masters champion secured second place twice in Riyadh and Andalucia, though Chicago delivered his first playoff heartbreak of 2025.