{"id":3779,"date":"2025-07-17T21:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T21:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/3779\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T21:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T21:19:09","slug":"christiaan-bezuidenhout-and-the-freak-rat-poison-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/3779\/","title":{"rendered":"Christiaan Bezuidenhout and the freak rat poison accident"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t
\n\"Christiaan\t\t<\/a>
\n\"Christiaan<\/p>\n

Christiaan Bezuidenhout was almost killed by a freak rat poison accident when he was a toddler.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Christiaan
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Christiaan
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\tThe 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

While doctors were able to remove it from his body, they couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis led to me becoming very introverted and depressed,\u201d he wrote in a DP World Tour player blog<\/a> back in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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 \u2013 you just have to learn to adapt and work with the stammer to control it the best you can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things came to a head in 2014 when, while playing in The Amateur at Royal Portrush, he was nominated for a drugs test.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time I was using beta blockers for my stutter,\u201d he explained. \u201cI wrote the medication down on the form prior to the drugs test, making no secret of the fact I was using this medication.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He had been suspended for two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just broke down,\u201d he said. \u201cIt 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be told two days before the event that I couldn\u2019t go because of a two-year drugs ban was simply too much for me to take in. It felt like my life was over.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, after a hearing, Bezuidenhout\u2019s ban was reduced to nine months.<\/p>\n

In his first tournament back, on a mini tour in his South Africa, he won by seven shots.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2019, he made his DP World Tour breakthrough, winning the Andalucia Masters in Spain by six shots over five runners-up \u2013 notably home favorite Jon Rahm.<\/p>\n

\"Christiaan<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Since then, Bezuidenhout has been a regular on the PGA Tour. And while he hasn\u2019t won yet on the American circuit, he has banked more than $11 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He has also been a regular in the majors in the last five years \u2013 where his best finish was his T12 at last month\u2019s US Open. Can he go one better here at The Open<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\t\tAbout the author<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Alex
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

News editor and writer. Probably entertainer third.<\/p>\n

Alex has been in the golf industry since 2007 and has helped shape a number of publications in that time. He joined Today\u2019s Golfer in January 2025 to lead the brand\u2019s news division.<\/p>\n

He is a keen golfer who claims to play off 12 and enjoys traveling the world to try new courses. His three favorites are Royal North Devon, the Old Course at St Andrews, and Royal Portrush \u2013 with special mentions for Okehampton and Bude & North Cornwall, where he first fell in love with the game.<\/p>\n

He uses a combination of Ping, TaylorMade and Callaway gear, and once bought the Nike SQ driver which he absolutely did not immediately regret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christiaan Bezuidenhout was almost killed by a freak rat poison accident when he was a toddler. The South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-3779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}