Naidoo gets huge 220-place boost on latest world rankings

Mar 4, 2025 | Featured, Features, Rankings

Dylan Naidoo showed how winning takes care of everything when his victory in the Investec South African Open Championship at the weekend saw him jump 220 places on the latest list issued by the Official World Golf Ranking.

Naidoo was in 466^th before his triumph, and he leapt to inside the world’s top 250 in 246^th and his career-high ranking. It was comfortably the best performance of his career in terms of points, giving him nearly three times the number of points he won when he finished in a share of second in last December’s AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open.

His previous highest ranking was 453^rd, after he finished in a share of 41^st in the DP World Tour’s Ras Al Kaimah Championship at the end of January. His new high, while it’s a long way off the rarified air of the world’s top 50, is just over a 0.1 of a point outside the world’s top 200, just over 0.35 of a point outside the top 150, and just over 0.8 of a point outside the world’s top 100.

Only two other South Africans inside the country’s top 25 according to the official list managed to turn their showings at Durban Country Club at the weekend into good climbs: Darren Fichardt was up 72 places to 376^th, and Branden Grace was up 134 places to 392^nd.

At the top of the South African rankings, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Thriston Lawerence were down three and four places to 54^th and 63^rd respectively, while Erik van Rooyen finished inside the top 10 of the PGA Tour’s Cognizant Classic to go up three spots to 84^th. Shaun Norris’s poor third round in the South African Open hampered his chances of getting indie the world’s top 100, but he did climb three places to 103^rd.

South Africa’s top 25: