Ashleigh Buhai was down one place this week on the latest Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings to 18^th after she missed the cut in defence of her AIG Women’s Open title.

There were no major shifts in position for South Africa’s top 10 players on the list, with Nicole Garcia and Kaleigh Telfer the only two to climb. Garcia was up two places to 187^th, and Telfer was up 25 places to 497^th, inside the world’s top 500.

It is of significance that South Africa’s top five players – Buhai, Paula Reto, Garcia, Lee-Anne Pace and Casandra Alexander – have all played 40 or more tournaments in the current ranking cycle, while a player like Kiera Floyd, who has only just turned professional, and is South Africa’s ninth-best player according to the rankings, has played just three.

The significance was underlined by the Sunshine Tour having women players in the same field as the men in their first Vodacom Origins of Golf event of the season, rather than expending the effort and the money on creating opportunities for a small core of local players who cannot play professional tournaments as often as would be ideal.

The upshot of that was a player like Cara Gorlei, who was the only one of five women entered to make the cut, dropped 10 places on the rankings.

South Africa’s top 10:

1. Ashleigh Buhai 18 (down 1)
2. Paula Reto 95 (down 8)
3. Nicole Garcia 187 (up 2)
4. Lee-Anne Pace 188 (down 4)
5. Casandra Alexander 286 (down 4)
6. Kaleigh Telfer 497 (up 25)
7. Stacy Bregman 645 (unchanged)
8. Nadia van der Westhuizen 753 (down 6)
9. Kiera Floyd 757 (down 5)
10. Bonita Bredenhann 983 (down 6)