Casey Jarvis celebrates on the 18th green after winning the Investec South African Open Championship.
Warren Little/Getty Images
Fortunes can change rapidly in golf. Just ask Casey Jarvis.
Two weeks ago the South African was yet to win on the DP World Tour and was realistically expecting this year’s major championship weeks to be days of rest on his schedule.
In just 11 days that situation has not merely changed, it has been utterly transformed.
Victory in the Magical Kenya Open two Sundays ago was good. Triumph in last week’s Investec South African Open was better. Earning a spot in this year’s Open Championship at Royal Birkdale was a bonus.
But an invitation to the Masters at Augusta National in April is the stuff of dreams.
The 22-year-old’s fortnight to remember began in Nairobi, where opening and closing rounds of 62 sealed his breakthrough win. Many would have rested on their laurels, but not Jarvis.
“I’ve tried to put last week’s win behind me,” he said on arrival at Stellenbosch Golf Club just outside Cape Town. “Every week is a new week and we all start on level par at the start of it.”
“It was my dream as a kid to play at Augusta. I thought about it this morning. I tried not to, but it was hard not to think about it.”
Casey Jarvis
Jarvis wasn’t on level par for long. He opened the tournament with a birdie and rounds of 67-68-64 gave him a one-stroke lead after 54 holes.
With three birdies in the opening five holes of the final round, Jarvis surged three strokes clear of the field, and he was rarely troubled thereafter, riding the wave of his newfound confidence while eyeing the remarkable triple prize on offer.
With his 14-under 266 total, Jarvis finished three strokes clear of his compatriot Hennie Du Plessis, Italy’s Francesco Laporta and Frenchman Frederic Lacroix.
“I feel on top of the world at this moment,” he said immediately afterwards. “It was my dream as a kid to play at Augusta. I thought about it this morning. I tried not to, but it was hard not to think about it.
“Now I just cannot wait to go there and see how my game compares to the best players in the world. I had a slight feeling that something crazy was going to happen and, now it has, it’s just incredible.”
Beyond the glory of adding his name to the South African Open trophy and that first visit to Augusta National, Jarvis is also now on track to win one of the 10 PGA Tour cards for 2027 on offer to the highest-ranked players not already exempt in the Race to Dubai.
That would represent yet another sea change in his life because his 2025 campaign featured not one top-10 finish, and he limped to 96th place in the rankings.
In November, however, he won twice on the Sunshine Tour – his first successes on his home circuit – and he opened the 2026 DP World Tour season with top-10s in Mauritius and Bahrain.
After his back-to-back victories he is now ranked third on the Race to Dubai.
There was 72nd-hole agony for Du Plessis, whose bogey dropped him into that three-way tie for second, thereby costing him a berth in the Open Championship. While Jarvis qualified by winning, Laporta and Lacroix claimed the other two spots on offer because they rank more highly than Du Plessis in the world ranking.
Matt Cooper
