SPOTLIGHT ON...
Flicking the
SWITCH
Once this Sunshine Tour pro removed the weight of expectation, his career changed and now he's on the rise again
BY MICHAEL VLISMAS
It was in the very act of letting go that JC Ritchie regained his grip on his career. He let go of everything that was weighing him down – literally and figuratively.
The moment he stopped expecting, he started winning: He won three times on the HotelPlanner Tour; he became the first South African to win the Tour's overall Road to Mallorca rankings; he came home and won on the Sunshine Tour; and he won himself a DP World Tour card for next season.
A season that began with almost no hope has ended as one of the most successful in the incredible life and career of Juan Carlo Ritchie.
'It's the best season I've ever had by far. The best season I've had in terms of being able to identify the things that have caused it to be so good. With most of my previous success, there was never really form leading up to me winning. If you consider where I was at the start of the year, and not even wanting to play the game anymore … having lost that passion, now being turned on its head like this, it's crazy,' says Ritchie.
'I knew I was a good golfer, but how to be a good professional golfer was a different thing'
It's not that Ritchie's career up until this point was not already impressive. He has 11 Sunshine Tour titles to his name and a Sunshine Tour Courier Guy Order of Merit crown. He is currently tied second on the all-time list of HotelPlanner Tour victories. But there was a three-year winless period before now which seriously eroded Ritchie's confidence.
However, when he missed the cut in last December's Alfred Dunhill Championship, it was a defining moment for him. 'I missed the cut at Leopard Creek and I just gave up after that. I lost all expectations for what I thought was possible. I just completely let go in the sense that I stopped trying so hard.
'At the start of this year I had only two goals – to lose some weight, and to feel better about myself. I rebuilt from the ground up. I was unfit and unhealthy. As I started losing weight my golf started improving. It was like peeling off the layers of an onion, and slowly but surely the confidence came with it. The biggest thing I had to work on this year was to stay in that mindset of not having expectations. To just keep doing the work, keep feeling good about yourself, and let the hard work play the game,' he says.
BY THE NUMBERS
2 Majors that he has played in. He missed the cut at the 2020 US Open and finished T40th at the 2021 Open Championship
7 Wins on the Challenge Tour (HotelPlanner), starting with the 2020 Limpopo Championship and most recently the 2025 Italian Challenge Open
11 Times he has won on the Sunshine Tour, the first being the 2017 Zimbabwe Open and the latest the 2025 Stella Artois Players Championship
14 In 10 of his 11 Sunshine Tour wins, he has finished at a score of 14 under par or better, the exception being the 2018 Sun Carnival City Challenge (-8)
26 The lowest score to par he has recorded over four rounds – when winning the 2022 Jonsson Workwear Open
61 Lowest round he has shot on the Sunshine Tour, at the 2022 Jonsson Workwear Open at Durban Country Club
1.1m The highest amount, in rands, that he has earned in one event – when finishing 3rd in the 2018 SA Open
Gallery below
In that three-year period Ritchie also rebuilt his swing – four times.
It may seem strange that a golfer who has already had so much success should concern himself with a three-year win drought. But Ritchie's life, and his own expectations of his golf, have combined to set a very high standard.
'I've always had that feeling inside of me that I was good enough to play at a higher level. What's bothered me for most of my career is knowing that I'm good enough, but not being able to prove it in the sense that I didn't know how to recreate my success or build form in a season. I knew I was a good golfer, but how to be a good professional golfer was a different thing altogether.'
Ritchie has always had this sense of destiny in the game, and it's carried him through some very difficult times in his life. As a teenager he lived in the garage of his golf coach while attending his sixth high school. He had talent, but it didn't translate in the traditional route of amateur teams and recognition at this level.
As he said several years ago, 'When I was younger, I always felt like there were a lot of critics. People who said it was a silly dream and it wouldn't work out. I was a decent junior golfer, but I was nothing but an average amateur. I didn't get picked for any big amateur teams. I didn't really achieve anything in amateur golf.
'I went to a few high schools. I did two months in Standerton High School, then moved to Pretoria Boys High and finished Grade 8 and 9 there. In Grade 10 Retief Goosen opened up a sports academy and I did Grade 10 there. The school closed, and I ended up moving to Southdowns College where I finished Grade 10. Halfway through Grade 11 I moved back to Standerton and lived with my dad. But then he had to move down to Richards Bay for work, and I didn't have a place to stay.
'I came back to Pretoria and spent Matric and the year after Matric living with my golf coach, Graeme Francis. He converted his double garage for me and built me a room. My parents didn't have the money to send me to boarding school, so he made a plan for me. I lived with him for two years.'
The same voice that made him feel like he was destined for something bigger, and which drove him through those tough times to realise his dream of becoming a professional, is the voice he heard again at the start of this year.
'I remember being 13 years old on the driving range and hearing people tell my dad, "Wow, your son has a good swing and might be a good golfer." A lot of this kind of thing gets said to youngsters, but I took it to heart when I was a kid. It created this big dream.'
This year, when he needed it most, that voice came through loud and clear again.
And Ritchie listened.
SUNSHINE TOUR | TYRONE WINFIELD | HEINRICH HELMBOLD | CARL FOURIE
