‘As a result of that naivety, I almost died’: South African golfer’s tumultuous journey to The Open

Blustering weather and a punishing coastal links track have combined to serve up the ultimate test for the game’s best golfers at this week’s Open Championship.

Blustering weather and a punishing coastal links course have combined to serve up the ultimate test for the game’s best golfers at this week’s Open Championship. And while world No. 68 Christiaan Bezuidenhout may not boast a ranking to rival Scottie Scheffler or Rory McIlroy, he is as well equipped as any in the field to stay the course. A strong start has put the South African in the mix heading into the weekend of the 153rd edition of the major at Royal Portrush, Northern Ireland, a far cry from the beginning of the 31-year-old’s own life. At the age of two, while playing with friends in the street, Bezuidenhout drank from a bottle of Coke that had been emptied and replaced with rat poison. “As a result of that naivety, I almost died,” he wrote in a blog for the European Tour in 2019. “The hospital had to pump my whole stomach to get rid of all the poison, but the poison affected the whole nervous system in my body.”