Call me ‘CBez’

Christiaan Bezuidenhout started playing golf at the age of four, growing up next to Delmas GC in South Africa. He excelled as a junior and thrived in his four years as a member of the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation, founded by Ernie in 1999 to provide educational assistance and golfing opportunities for youngsters predominantly from families of limited resources.

“Christiaan went about his work with a quiet determination to succeed,” recalls Hannes van Niekerk, CEO at the Foundation. “He took his school work and his golf seriously. He didn’t ever pitch up at a tournament to come second, he was always there to be the absolute best he could be. His dedication to hard work was a great example to the other members of the Foundation. It’s no surprise that he is now seeing the success that he is in his professional career.”

Christiaan turned professional in 2015, winning the Order of Merit on the Big Easy Tour, the developmental tour for the Sunshine Tour. He was Rookie of the Year on the Sunshine Tour in 2017 and earned a DP World Tour card for 2018. Finding his feet quickly, Christiaan claimed his maiden Tour title in 2019 at the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucia Masters hosted by the Sergio Garcia Foundation, shooting rounds of 66, 68, 69, 71 on the notoriously tough Valderrama layout for an impressive six-stroke victory.

Ernie Els was full of praise for Christiaan’s quick transition from rookie to tournament winner. “I remember Christiaan joining us at our Foundation; he clearly had some game. To see him come of age with his first DP World Tour win in 2019 was quite a thrill for me. I’d been very impressed the way he’d established himself as a pro; I remember at the Dunhill a few years previously he’d got a special invite and he wasn’t overawed by the experience. It felt to me like he was building-up to that win in Spain. And I’m not surprised he’s won again since.”

Indeed, the following season Christiaan started the year with victory at the Dimension Data Pro-Am, a co-sanctioned event between the Sunshine Tour and the Challenge Tour, and then at the end of the year secured back-to-back DP World Tour wins on home soil at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the South African Open.

“It’s any South African golfer’s dream to win a national tournament,” commented Christiaan. “I fought hard today, the front nine things didn’t go my way and I just dug deep. I’m really chuffed to stand here as a winner.”

Christiaan finished 2020 seventh on the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai and broke into the Top-50 of the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time. In 2021 he represented South Africa in the Olympics in Tokyo and, at the end of that season, earned his 2021-22 PGA TOUR card after finishing fifth in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. Christiaan would then tee it up in 24 tournaments, making the cut 20 times and accumulating $2,233,289 in prize money. In this, his rookie year, he finished a creditable 51st in the FedEx Cup. The icing on the cake was a captain’s pick for the Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow. In 2023 Christiaan had a solid year, somewhat hampered at times by injury, but finishing inside the requisite top-125 on the FedEx Cup rankings to guarantee his playing privileges for the 2024 season.

“For me, it’s important that I always work hard, while remaining humble,” comments Christiaan. “To keep calm during the difficult times and not to give up but, more importantly, to be cool-headed during the better times and to focus on what is important.”

It’s a refreshing and appropriately mature outlook from a young man who, at the age of two, nearly died having mistakenly drank rat poison from a Coca-Cola can. It left him with a stammer and he has lived his whole life navigating the challenges of stuttering, with painful memories of pretending to laugh along with people who made fun of him for his speech, all the while internalising embarrassment and shame. Christiaan has since partnered with the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research in an effort to reach and inspire the stuttering community worldwide to triumph over adversity, to never let stuttering stop them from pursuing their personal and professional dreams, and to ensure that no child has to suffer the way he did.

Christiaan resides in Florida with his wife, Kristen. In November 2023 the couple were blessed to welcome their first child to the world, a son, John Christiaan.