Five South Africans will tee it up in this week’s PGA Championship starting at Valhalla Golf Club in Kentucky, USA, on Thursday.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Dean Burmester, Thriston Lawrence, Erik van Rooyen and Ryan van Velzen will be the players flying the South African flag this week.
The SA contingent will be hoping for a better showing at the year’s second major, after only one player from the Rainbow Nation made the weekend at The Masters at Augusta last month.
Van Rooyen was the only one to make the cut, before ending in a tie for 55th on 13-over for the week in what he described as a ‘brutal’ Masters. He did, however, finish ahead of Tiger Woods. The ailing 15-time major winner, Woods, was extended a special invitation to the event this week.
Interestingly, Burmester is in the field this week with a special invitation extended his way. The 34-year-old is a member of the Saudi-funded LIV Golf Tour and recently won the Miami stop of the series last month. In fact, his paycheque that week eclipsed that of Masters champion Scottie Scheffler.
Scheffler walked away with $3.6 million (R69 million) while Burmester pocketed $4 million (R76.7 million).
Lawrence, meanwhile, will have felt relieved to make the field for the PGA Championship. The top 100 in the world rankings the week before the event are extended invitations, and the 27-year-old was indeed the 100th ranked player on the globe last week. Had the cutoff been on Monday, he would have missed out by one spot.
Possibly the most excited, and possibly nervous, of the SA players will be Ryan van Velzen. The 22-year-old won the Sunshine Tour order of merit last month, which earned him an invite to the PGA Championship as well as The Open Championship later in the year.