Casey Jarvis secures emotional victory at South African Open

Victories on the DP World Tour this season have been a bit like London buses. You wait ages and then all of a sudden they all come along at once in pairs.

We have already seen South Africa’s Jayden Schaper winning in successive weeks and then came another two-time winner in American Patrick Reed and the latest to join the club is another South African, Casey Jarvis, who followed last week’s maiden success at the Magical Kenyan Open with an emotional win in the South African Open at Stellenbosch Golf Club.

His nerves were tested to the full in this one. He was three ahead on the 17th tee but playing partner Hennie Du Plessis chipped in for a birdie to cut his lead and then, with just one hole left, play was suspended because of lightning, leaving Jarvis to twiddle his thumbs before getting back out to finish the job.

Overnight leader Jarvis, aged 22, got off to the best possible start with a birdie at the first and he followed it with two more at the fourth and fifth and reached the turn in 32. 

He dropped a shot at the 10th but another birdie at the 12th put him back in control and he then parred the next five holes until the weather forced him and playing partners Du Plessis and Francesco Laporta from the course with Jarvis on 14 under, Du Plessis two adrift and Laporta on 11 under alongside Frederic Lacroix.

When they came back out Du Plessis helped out Jarvis by dropping a shot at the last. A par for Jarvis gave him a final round of 67, a 72-hole total of 266 and a three-shot victory. As an added bonus, the win secures him a place in the field at both The Masters and The Open. 

Jarvis said: "I feel on top of the world in this moment. It is absolutely incredible.To win in front of my home crowd in my home Open is just absolutely fantastic, I’ve got no words. I had a feeling from the start of the week that something crazy was going to happen and it has."

There was also a welcome return to form for England’s Eddie Pepperell who finished with a 64 to end the week in fifth place.

Who is Casey Jarvis?

Jarvis was born on July 28, 2003 in Boksburg, South Africa. He had a successful amateur career and was on the national squad. He won the 2019 Junior Golf World Cup in Japan with the South African team, joined by Samuel Simpson, Martin Vorster and Christo Lamprecht. 

In 2020, aged just 16, he captured the South African double, winning both the South African Stroke Play Championship and the South African Amateur Championship.

He also won the African Amateur Stroke Play Championship back to back in 2021 and 2022.

Jarvis also won on South Africa's development tour, the Big Easy Tour, a few weeks before he turned professional.

He turned professional in August 2022 and joined the Sunshine Tour, where he was runner-up in the South African PGA and the Tour Championship and was named Rookie of the Year.

At age 19, he become the second youngest person to shoot a 59, in the third round of the 2023 Stella Artois Players Championship.

Jarvis's results in Sunshine Tour events co-sanctioned by the Challenge Tour in early 2023 (including a second-place finish at the SDC Open) enabled him to play in further Challenge Tour events. He had runner-up finishes at the Copenhagen Challenge and Czech Challenge before winning the Euram Bank Open in Austria in July to move to the top of the Race to Mallorca season ranking and earn promotion to the DP World Tour.

This was his 85th start on the DP World Tour and his second successive win after claiming the Magical Kenya Open title. 

He has made 55 cuts, had one third and five other top 10s, with two of those finishes coming this season. This victory takes him to third place in the Race to Dubai and he becomes the third two-time winner after Patrick Reed and fellow South African Jayden Schaper.

He averages 299.5 yards from the tee, finds 58.10% of fairways and hits 71.2% of greens in regulation. He averages 28.20 putts per round, gets up and down from the sand 36.36% of the time and has a scoring average of 68.6.