A top-20 finish for MJ Daffue at the weekend on the PGA Tour helped him be the best performing South African of the week on the Official World Golf Ranking.
Daffue climbed nine places to 152nd on the list released on Monday, and is now knocking on the door of getting back inside the world’s top 150 and his own highest-ever ranking of 141st.
All three South Africans in that PGA Tour event, the Valspar Championship in Palm Harbor, Florida, had bumps to their rankings: Erik van Rooyen’s top-10 finish saw him climb four places to 117th and Garrick Higgo was up two places to 183rd after finishing 58th.
Jaco Ahlers was the biggest climber of the top 20 South Africans on the list: His share of third in the Sunshine Tour’s and DP World Tour’s SDC Championship at St Francis Links saw him jump 35 places to 272nd and leapfrog Daniel van Tonder to be 20th amongst the top-ranked locals.
With the WGC-Dell Match Play scheduled for this week, the effects of LIV Golf on South African player representation in that field can be clearly seen: Louis Oosthuizen and Dean Burmester could reasonably have expected to have been in the field but for their defection to the breakaway league. Instead, only South Africa’s top-ranked player, Christiaan Bezuidenhout is in the 64-man field. He is ranked 72 this week, and gets in thanks to the absence of other LIV players ranked above him who were not considered.
South Africa’s top 20:
- Christiaan Bezuidenhout 72 (down 4)
- Dean Burmester 74 (down 3)
- Thriston Lawrence 86 (down 1)
- Louis Oosthuizen 104 (down 4)
- Oliver Bekker 113 (unchanged)
- Erik van Rooyen 117 (up 4)
- Ockie Strydom 146 (down 1)
- MJ Daffue 152 (up 9)
- Dylan Frittelli 173 (down 1)
- Shaun Norris 174 (down 1)
- Garrick Higgo 183 (up 2)
- Charl Schwartzel 201 (down 4)
- Branden Grace 218 (up 3)
- Hennie du Plessis 219 (down 3)
- Zander Lombard 231 (up 4)
- George Coetzee 237 (down 3)
- JC Ritchie 247 (down 2)
- Justin Harding 248 (down 6)
- Louis de Jager 256 (up 3)
- Jaco Ahlers 272 (up 35)
