Austrian Peter Burgstaller went alone for a round of golf to clear his head after being cramped in a long-haul flight. He was lining up a putt on the 12th hole when strangers approached, pulled a gun and shot him through the heart at point-blank range. He died on the blood-soaked green for the contents of his pockets - a mobile phone and a wallet.
On Thursday, two men appeared in court in connection with the November 23 slaying in South Africa that shocked many in the sports world and raised the question of how safe visitors to the next football World Cup will be.
'Suspects have been arrested for being in possession of certain items suspected to belong to the deceased,' police spokesman Zandra Hechter says. 'They have been detained pending further investigation.'
Details of Burgstaller's murder are unclear. It appears he was playing alone, having just arrived from Europe, and had booked in at the exclusive Selborne Estate, on the southern coastal region of KwaZulu-Natal. In the early evening, with the sun still high in the sky, he was killed with a single shot through the chest.
Burgstaller, a former footballer turned event organiser - he was Austria's national goalkeeper and played for SV Salzburg - was in South Africa to drum up business on the back of the 2010 World Cup, for which South Africa is the host nation. Although he was not part of the official Fifa delegation that was also in the country last weekend, his death did prompt many to question safety preparations for the event.
Football officials were quick to react. 'In a city of more than 3.5 million people, some crimes are more possible, as [they are] in other countries,' Fifa president Sepp Blatter says. To illustrate his point, Blatter mentions that a teenage girl was shot and killed at a Zurich bus stop during the same week Burgstaller was murdered.