After several top-10 finishes on the Sunshine Tour, CJ du Plessis is sticking to his process to achieve an elusive win, writes MIKE GREEN.
You’re never going to learn much from the vast majority of taciturn touring professionals. Count Charles (CJ) du Plessis among them. Like many of his peers, he’ll leave the teaching to his qualified counterparts.
And yet, as fans, we watch touring pros in the sure knowledge that they are good, and in the hope that we’ll pick up something that will help us in our own game. We comb interviews, searching for that flash of insight into their brilliance that can rub off on us. Some of us have even played with them.
CJ du Plessis is loose-limbed and gangly on the course. That lets him hit the ball a long way, and he exudes an irrepressible enthusiasm for the game and for life itself. His course management sometimes seemed a little too much like his walk, but that was then.
In the nine years since he turned professional after a decorated amateur career, he is still searching for the first win, and when you see him on television, you know that if you are to learn anything from him, it is probably well hidden from view.
Du Plessis has 12 top-10 finishes to his name over his career on the Sunshine Tour, which doesn’t seem like a lot. It is in that very statistic that the keen fan will find exactly what it is that CJ du Plessis can teach: a dogged determination to succeed, and to never deviate from a plan when it is set and there is certainty that the destination is inevitable.
He calls it ‘sticking to the process’.
It’s a little like dozens of words on that ever-increasing list of cliches in which touring professionals speak. But the way it drops into his conversation, the way it is persistently repeated, makes it clear this is what is driving him forward. That process brought him a fifth-place finish at last December’s South African Open at Sun City when Daniel van Tonder took the title.
That performance was a pointer to better things to come from a player who, perhaps as much as any other in recent times on the Sunshine Tour, epitomises the label ‘journeyman’. There is no shame in being a journeyman, as the story of dozens of them who break through to the highest levels will attest. Look at Richard Bland who finally won on the European Tour in 2021 in his 478th start, after turning professional in 1996.
CJ du Plessis has quietly built himself a solid career on the Sunshine Tour. There is plenty for him to be proud of, on a personal level and in golfing terms. ‘I’m proud of myself because I still play golf,’ he says wryly. ‘Playing golf for a living can be very stressful, and to find motivation when you are not playing well is tough. I am most proud of how I have grown in my 10 years as a professional golfer.’
At the same time, perhaps more than anything else, he would like a win. Who wouldn’t? How much does that drive him? Is it something that affects the way he practises and prepares?
‘Winning is something you have to work for,’ he says. ‘I am driven to prepare in the right way – mentally and physically – for events. If I stick to the process, I’m sure a win is just around the corner.’
In his first year on the Sunshine Tour in 2013, he pulled off a top-10 with a seventh at the BMG Classic at Glendower. How encouraging was that? How tense was he in that final round? Did an early bogey and then a double shake his confidence?
‘My first top-10 was amazing,’ he recalls. ‘At the time, I felt like I could do it more often. I was OK mentally during that final round, but the weather was just terrible. I remember playing all 18 holes in the rain.’
He followed that with two top-10s in 2014 in Zambia and at the Wild Coast. Were things progressing the way he wanted them to at that point, or did he feel that he should be trying something different in pursuit of that elusive victory?
‘I felt like I was progressing, yes,’ he says. ‘I was just absorbing everything and learning so much about professional golf, so I wasn’t going to change too much. It was still early days in my career.’
He had two runner-up finishes in 2016, in Zambia and in Swaziland. At that point, it must have started getting frustrating, because a win seemed almost within reach – and yet so far away. ‘I had some great weeks back-to-back in 2016 and I felt like I had “moved up” in confidence. But I was motivated to do better, so I was not frustrated at all,’ he says.
He didn’t have any decent results in 2015, or in 2017. So what was going on in those years? ‘In 2015, I tore my left lung at the Joburg Open on the day before the tournament,’ he says. ‘I recovered after six weeks, but mentally, it was tough. I lost all my confidence and I could not get going at all that year.
‘In 2017, I made some major changes to my swing and it took a while to believe in what I was working on.’
Everything got back on track in 2018 and he had yet another runner-up finish at the Sibaya Challenge, after a top-10 at St Francis Links. What were his thoughts at that stage? He wasn’t in contention as much as he was before, or as he has come to be lately. Was he concerned? Or was it part of a process he was going through?
He shrugs. ‘I was playing well,’ he says. ‘I was just too focused on the outcome, instead of the process.’
And there it is: the process. It’s led to his most recent form, with three top-10s in a row in September last year. What brought on the good form? He started working with Grant Veenstra, who has become something of a super-coach in South Africa.
‘I have been working hard on my swing with my coach for a couple of years,’ Du Plessis says. ‘It seems like the swing has changed to where it needs to be. Of course, my hopes have started being raised, but it takes long in this game, unfortunately, to trust something new.’
Veenstra has some thoughts of his own on this whole process. ‘I’ve been working with CJ for about two years and he has come a long way,’ he says. ‘We have put a structure together for him and I think with the clarity of his game, he can focus on exactly what he needs to do.
‘In the past he searched a lot in his game which brought inconsistencies. He has a solid game and massive potential to do well at a high level and I’m looking forward to seeing where he can push himself to.
‘And as for trusting the process and sticking to it? That’s now. It’s something he’s learned, whereas in the past, he would second-guess everything.’
It all came together with a superb fifth-place finish at the South African Open Championship in December last year. How does that rate for Du Plessis in his list of good achievements?
‘It was my best performance over a weekend of golf as a professional,’ he reckons. ‘I did nothing different. Stuck to my process and I enjoyed every single shot. It fired up a belief inside me that I have always had – that you just have to stay patient in this game.’
Before he turned professional CJ du Plessis represented South Africa in a Test match against France and Scotland in 2010. In 2011, he represented his country again at the All Africa Championship and in a Test match against Scotland. In 2012, he again represented South Africa, this time in Scotland. He represented South Africa at the Zone VI championship in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and he donned national colours at the Tailhade Cup in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
What of his hopes and dreams: does he have ambitions beyond the Sunshine Tour? ‘I would love to play on the Asian Tour and on the DP World Tour,’ he says. ‘I’m sticking to the process of staying patient and getting smarter on the course.
‘I have the best support from my family, particularly from my mother, Karen. My brothers and my sister are also very supportive, as is my uncle from my dad’s side of the family. And I feel grateful for the support of many fans, who share in my successes.
‘Grant has also helped me change to become more consistent and to understand what shots to play in different scenarios.’
Right there is the lesson for lesser mortals like us: it’s part of the process!
BEST FINISHES
2016 Big Easy South to East Challenge (2nd), Lombard Insurance Classic (2nd), Zambia Sugar Open (2nd)
2018 Sibaya Challenge (T2nd), Vodacom Origins of Golf – St Francis (7th), Big Easy Challenge #10 (T8th), Big Easy Challenge #2 (T3rd)
2021 SA Open (5th), Vodacom Origins of Golf – Humewood (T6th), Vodacom Origins of Golf – Mt Edgecombe (2nd), Sunshine Tour Invitational (8th)
– This article first appeared in the March 2022 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine. Subscribe here!
