JOHANNESBURG – Branden Grace is steadily working his way back into the world’s top 100 players, and his work in the European Tour’s Dutch Open at the weekend saw him climb on place to 56th on the Official World Golf Ranking.
Grace had a share of 12th behind winner Kristoffer Broberg at the weekend, and, while he wasn’t inside the top 10 as Justin Harding was, he still did enough to get one spot higher on the list, and 70 higher than the 126th where he started the year. He has been ranked as high as 10th, back in 2016 after the PGA Championship where he finished in a share of fourth.
For Harding, his top-10 performance in the Dutch Open was not enough to see him climb. On the contrary, he dropped two spots down to 100th, and he is the eighth South African inside that top 100 in the world.
Louis Oosthuizen remains the top-ranked South African in eighth. Other than Grace, all the other top 10 South Africans lost ground in a quiet week on the rankings, with Dean Burmester and Daniel van Tonder the closest to the top 100 at 105th and 116th respectively.
Lower down, 14th-ranked Wilco Nienaber climbed to 201st from 206th, while Oliver Bekker’s continued good form on the Challenge Tour took him up eight places to 240th, where he is South Africa’s 17th-ranked player.
South Africa’s top 10
1. Louis Oosthuizen 8 (unchanged)
2. Christiaan Bezuidenhout 40 (down 1)
3. Garrick Higgo 49 (down 1)
4. Erik van Rooyen 53 (down 1)
5. Branden Grace 56 (up 1)
6. Charl Schwartzel 75 (down 2)
7. Dylan Frittelli 90 (down 4)
8. Justin Harding 100 (down 2)
9. Dean Burmester 105 (down 3)
10. Daniel van Tonder 116 (down 2)
SA Tour Golf