Jayden Schaper took a major step towards receiving an invitation to the 2026 Masters when his fourth-place finish on the DP World Tour at the weekend pushed into the top 50 in the latest Official World Golf Ranking list.

His stock has been on a constant upward curve since his share of fifth in the Open de Espana in October last year. He broke into the world’s top 100 with his maiden professional victory in the Alfred Dunhill Championship in December, and has climbed steadily since then.

He has had another victory – the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open just a week later – a share of 20th and last week’s share of fourth. That trend has pushed him to his career-high on the official rankings, and should he still be in the top 50 on March 30, he will be riding down Magnolia Lane to tee off at Augusta National on April 9.

There is another route by which he could get to make that drive: The winner of the Investec South African Open Championship which finishes at Stellenbosch Golf Club on March 1 will also be getting an invitation.

Schaper is South Africa’s top-ranked player on the official lists, with Garrick Higgo 64th, Thriston Lawrence 71st, Christiaan Bezuidenhout 83rd, Aldrich Potgieter 87th and Shaun Norris 98th the others inside the world’s top 100 this week.

To get a sense of how good Schaper’s run has been over the last few months, a glance at the website Data Golf (https://datagolf.com/datagolf-rankings) shows Schaper ranked 24th in the world. The Data Golf Rankings are a ranking of the best golfers in the world according to a deep data-driven model. They are determined by averaging the field-strength adjusted scores of each golfer across professional and amateur tournaments, with more recent rounds receiving more weight.

Four other South Africans are up this week in the official lists, which suffer from PGA Tour exceptionalism bias, as well as the lack of ranking points for LIV Golf. The four are Barend Botha, who is riding a wave of good form on the Korn Ferry Tour to reach a career-high of 175th, Jacques Kruyswijk, who had a solid finish in Dubai to climb to 176th, Michael Hollick, who has kept up his solid form on the DP World Tour to reach a career-high of 234th, and Dylan Frittelli who was up eight places to 446th.

South Africa’s top 25:

1. Jayden Schaper 50 (up 9)
2. Garrick Higgo 64 (unchanged)
3. Thriston Lawrence 71 (down 5)
4. Christiaan Bezuidenhout 83 (down 1)
5. Aldrich Potgieter 87 (down 3)
6. Shaun Norris 98 (down 1)
7. Erik van Rooyen 125 (down 5)
8. JC Ritchie 132 (down 2)
9. Christo Lamprecht 157 (down 6)
10. Barend Botha 175 (up 21)
11. Jacques Kruyswijk 176 (up 2)
12. Richard Sterne 201 (down 3)
13. Casey Jarvis 206 (unchanged)
14. Daniel van Tonder 213 (down 5)
15. Michael Hollick 234 (up 4)
16. Dean Burmester 271 (down 5)
17. Brandon Stone 318 (down 9)
18. Jonathan Broomhead 330 (down 7)
19. Darren Fichardt 342 (down 9)
20. Louis Ootshuizen 350 (down 10)
21. Robin Williams 394 (down 13)
22. Dylan Naidoo 395 (down 12)
23. Dylan Frittelli 446 (up 8)
24. Pieter Moolman 453 (down 5)
25. Branden Grace 452 (down 2)