Fab Five ready for Dunhill test

11 December 2024 – All eyes will be on the iconic Leopard Creek when the best local talent and a host of global stars target glory in the 2024 Alfred Dunhill Championship. Amateurs Astin Arthur, Christiaan Maas, Jordan Burnand, Daniel Bennett and Kieron van Wyk will lead the GolfRSA charge from 12-15 December in one of the most prestigious tournaments in South African golf.

The amateur talents will join a host of former GolfRSA National Squad alumni at the second DP World Tour stop in South Africa this season, including Aldrich Potgieter, Altin van der Merwe, Kyle de Beer, Casey Jarvis, Wilco Nienaber and Ryan van Velzen, winner of the 2023/24 Sunshine Tour Order of Merit, delivered by The Courier Guy.

Arthur will be looking to cap off a stellar year in which he rocketed to the number one spot in the amateur game. Known for his dedication to improvement, he will no doubt be a better player following his trip to compete in two top amateur events in Argentina last month.

His teammate for that fortnight, Jordan Burnand, is another looking to test his game against the best. He powered the SA side to the All Africa Golf Team Championship in Zimbabwe at the end of October, which included an individual win at the event.

Christiaan Maas has been grabbing the headlines for his form over the past few seasons and will be quietly confident of attracting a few more this week.

Fresh off a top-five finish at the Spirit International, the top-ranked amateur has a lot of history at Leopard Creek following a loss to now-professional Casey Jarvis in his debut at the iconic course during the GolfRSA African Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 2022.

He then came up agonisingly short in a playoff loss to Altin van der Merwe earlier this year in the inaugural R&A African Amateur Championship, where he catapulted into contention with a course record 63.

Another South African amateur with a penchant for low scoring is Daniel Bennett.

The rising star displaced Mark McNulty’s record 72-hole tournament score when he won the 2023 Nomads South Africa Boys Under-19 Championship by 21 shots after shooting rounds of 62-61-68-63. His tally of -34 beat McNulty’s 36-year-old record by five strokes.

Having completed his first six months at the University of Texas with Maas, Bennett will begin this week looking to solidify his status as one of the next generation of stars to be seriously considered.

Fellow GolfRSA National Squad member Van Wyk will be a dark-horse to consider when lining up how the GolfRSA contingent will fare.
The 22-year-old College of Charleston senior – a product of the South African Golf Development Board – made history in a legendary rookie campaign in 2021-22 when he won the CAA Golfer of the Year and became the first black golfer in the history of the league to claim an individual CAA Championship title.

He soared to the No 1 spot in the Bridgestone APGA Collegiate Ranking following his third collegiate victory in October. He fired rounds of 64, 66 and 65 to go 21-under in the White Sands Bahamas Invitational. The five-stroke victory also earned Van Wyk, now sixth in the NCAA Individual Rankings, a coveted spot in the PGA Tour’s Puerto Rico Open next March.
He recently tied for first in the CAA Championship and was instrumental in COC’s seventh victory with a new CAA Championship record of 35-under. He certainly has a strong foundation upon which to launch himself into this new test of skills.

Fortunately, none of the five will be overawed by the course, despite its known demands. They all have experience around the famed track and would rather be focussing on hunting down the leaders than watching any of the wildlife frolicking nearby.

Meanwhile, recent squad graduates Potgieter, Van der Merwe and De Beer will be eager to show how far they’ve come since leaving the amateur ranks.

Potgieter, who will be fired up after coming up one-shot short at the Nedbank Golf Challenge last week, became the youngest winner in Korn Ferry Tour history by winning The Bahamas Great Abaco Classic in January 2024. Since then, he has graduated to the PGA Your and should be a threat, given his driving distance.

The big-hitting 20-year-old is no stranger to Leopard Creek with finishes of third and then victory in 2023 in his two outings as an amateur at the venue.

De Beer, the South African Amateur champion in 2022, leads the Fortress Rookie of the Year Race, but he is just a smidge ahead of Van der Merwe. Both players will be looking to secure a strong result in the heat of the African bushveld.

Perhaps they will be hunting down one of the grand masters of the event – Charl Schwartzel – who seemingly only needs to arrive to find himself in contention. The 2011 Masters champion already has four Alfred Dunhill Championship titles to his name and still owns the record tournament total of 24 under par and the biggest margin of victory of 12 strokes. If his CV wasn’t impressive enough, he also owns five runner-up finishes.

Schwartzel joins defending champion Louis Oosthuizen in a field that includes previous champions Ockie Strydom, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Pablo Larrazabal, Brandon Stone, Richard Sterne and Alvaro Quiros.
PGA Tour winners Erik van Rooyen and Dylan Frittelli, as well as the in-form Thriston Lawrence and Dean Burmester round out an excellent field.