The Masters will be played in November and Christiaan Bezuidenhout will be among the South Africans in the field at Augusta National, writes WADE PRETORIUS.
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For those looking for a glimmer of good news, here’s a piece because Bezuidenhout has capped his climb through the Official World Golf Ranking with Tuesday’s news of an invite to The Masters.
He will be one of 26 first-timers at the event and joins Erik van Rooyen, Justin Harding, Trevor Immelman, Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel as the South Africans to watch.
Americans Scottie Scheffler, Collin Morikawa and Graeme McDowell were fellow invitees due to their top-50 ranking at the time of cut-off.
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The Andalucia Masters winner currently sits 47th in the world, with the rankings now frozen due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Bezuidenhout started 2020 ranked 87th after a year that included his first European Tour win, a top five at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth and a T12 at the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.
He then started the new calendar year with a heart-breaking playoff loss at Omega Dubai Desert Classic; he would’ve been consoled somewhat by the large pay cheque and sizeable rankings leap which took him 10 spots from the world’s top 50 players.
An eagle at the 72nd hole at the DiData Pro-Am at Fancourt brought the 25-year-old inside the top 100 before he closed out his golf until the suspension of the tours with a T29 at the WGC-Mexico and a T18 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Photo: Andrew Bershaw/Getty Images
