With only two cuts in his last five events, Christiaan Bezuidenhout is teeing up at the SSE Scottish Hydro Challenge at the Macdonald Spey Valley Golf Club searching for consistency and a way on to the European Tour.
Bezuidenhout plays this week as one of five South Africans in the field, alongside Erik van Rooyen, Thriston Lawrence, Bryce Easton and Rourke van der Spuy, reports the Sunshine Tour website.
Of those, only Van Rooyen is keeping himself within sight of the goal to finish in the top 15 on the Challenge Tour’s Road to Oman listing. Those 15 players all win promotion to the European Tour, and Bezuidenhout is currently in 118th spot, a long way from striking distance of 15th, and he needs to get closer ahead of the end-of-year tournaments that offer much more substantial prize money – but with much more limited access.
So he needs to grab the opportunity of playing in Scotland, where he has performed well in the past, notably in the Dunhill Links Championship, and turn that familiarity into a good result this weekend – considerably better than last week’s share of 56th in the Made in Denmark Challenge.
He has a share of 11th in the KPMG Trophy in Belgium on June 11 as his best performance on the Challenge Tour, but three missed cuts are not indicative of his proven ability that shone through when he finished second to Brandon Stone in the 2016 SA Open, and when he won his maiden Sunshine Tour title in October last year in the Sun Fish River Challenge.
The SSE Scottish Hydro Challenge gets underway on Thursday.
Photo: Petri Oeschger/Sunshine Tour/Gallo Images
