The remarkable story of Christiaan Bezuidenhout and the freak accident that changed his life forever

Christiaan Bezuidenhout was almost killed by a freak rat poison accident when he was a toddler.

The South African is in contention at Royal Portrush. But things could have been so different for Christiaan Bezuidenhout after a terrifying incident as a toddler.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout was just two years old and playing with friends when he stumbled across a bottle of Coca-Cola. He opened it, took a sip, and his life changed forever.

Not long later, the South African was in hospital having his stomach pumped. The discarded bottle, it turned out, contained rat poison.

While doctors were able to remove it from his body, they couldn’t prevent it from affecting his entire nervous system. The long-term effects saw Bezuidenhout develop a stutter. That would, in turn, lead to him suffering from anxiety.

“This led to me becoming very introverted and depressed,” he wrote in a DP World Tour player blog back in 2019.

“I was basically just living in my own world because I was always scared of having to engage in conversation with my stutter. When I talked to people, I knew I would struggle and it would take time for me to deliver my words, so I always had a fear of answering the phone, saying my name, or being asked a question.

“I would always withdraw myself from a group because I feared speaking to them. My psychologist helped me a lot to get over that fear and get a lot more self-confidence to put myself out there. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to get rid of a stammer – you just have to learn to adapt and work with the stammer to control it the best you can.”

Things came to a head in 2014 when, while playing in The Amateur at Royal Portrush, he was nominated for a drugs test.

“At that time I was using beta blockers for my stutter,” he explained. “I wrote the medication down on the form prior to the drugs test, making no secret of the fact I was using this medication.”

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However, two months later, Bezuidenhout was getting ready to represent his country in the Eisenhower Trophy when his dad called to tell him he needed to come home immediately.

He had been suspended for two years.

“I just broke down,” he said. “It was awful. I had spent my whole amateur career working to get into that Eisenhower side to represent my nation, it was a huge goal of mine to be selected in the team.

“To be told two days before the event that I couldn’t go because of a two-year drugs ban was simply too much for me to take in. It felt like my life was over.”

He continued: “The worst part of it all were all the stories that came out from people in the golf industry and supposed close friends back home. I was accused of using it to better my performances, which really hurt me and my family. A lot of nasty things were said and I was known as the guy banned from golf for a drug related incident.

“I was aware of how labels like that are hard to shake off and I reached a very low point in my life, I was banned from playing the only thing in the world I loved, the game of golf. I was inconsolable.”

Eventually, after a hearing, Bezuidenhout’s ban was reduced to nine months.

In his first tournament back, on a mini tour in his South Africa, he won by seven shots.

Then, in 2019, he made his DP World Tour breakthrough, winning the Andalucia Masters in Spain by six shots over five runners-up – notably home favorite Jon Rahm.

The following year, as the Covid pandemic ravaged the golf calendar, he went back-to-back at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and South African Open.

Since then, Bezuidenhout has been a regular on the PGA Tour. And while he hasn’t won yet on the American circuit, he has banked more than $11 million.

He has also been a regular in the majors in the last five years – where his best finish was his T12 at last month’s US Open. Can he go one better here at The Open?