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Beating Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia and the rest of the European Tour stars to capture the Andalucia Masters was nothing compared to the obstacles that Christiaan Bezuidenhout has faced in his short, difficult life.
The 24-year-old’s improbable journey to European Tour winner actually began with a freak accident. In a blog post in March for the tour’s website, Bezuidenhout detailed how, when he was 2 years old, he picked up a Coke bottle and took a swig, only to learn that it’d been contaminated with rat poison. He was rushed to the hospital, and his stomach was pumped, but the poison still ravaged his nervous system and created a few lifelong challenges.