Frittelli’s comeback win triggers 243-place world rankings climb

Feb 6, 2024 | Featured, Features, Rankings

Dylan Frittelli said he was exploring giving up golf – but that was before he returned to the winner’s circle at the weekend with his triumph in the DP World Tour’s Bahrain Championship.

The return to winning ways gave the 33-year-old a 243-place bump on the Official World Golf Ranking list released this week to 191^st. That’s his best position since his withdrawal from the RBC Heritage on the PGA Tour last year. His loss of form saw him lose his PGA Tour playing status, and he has taken the bull by the horns in an attempt to get his career kickstarted again by returning to Europe where he pulled off his early professional triumphs.

He has some distance to travel before he regains the kind of status which saw him ranked as high as 44^th, but it was his best single-week showing on the rankings ever in terms of positions gained, and right up there with his impressive victory in the 2019 John Deere Classic on the PGA Tour and his share of second in The Open in 2021.

The man who finished in a share of second behind Frittelli in Bahran, Zander Lombard, was up 18 places on the latest rankings list to a career-high of 100^th. Ockie Strydom also had a good bounce-back as he returned to form with his share of fourth in Bahrain. He was up 43 places to 230^th.

The two men who played in the weather-shortened AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach on the weekend, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Erik van Rooyen, both climbed on the list. Bezuidenhout remains South Africa’s highest-ranked player at 57, on up from last week, and Van Rooyen was up eight places to 79t. Van Rooyen surpasses Thriston Lawrence, down two spots to 81^st, as South Africa’s second-best player.

South Africa’s top 25: