Compleat Golfer looks back at the highs and lows of the Official World Golf Rankings and picks out the winners and losers from the year gone by.
WINNERS
Louis Oosthuizen – 20th
Winner of the SA Open, he is five places better off than his 2018 starting point.
Erik van Rooyen – 50th
En route to the Masters, Van Rooyen’s maiden win on the European Tour helped him move from his January starting point of 141st.
Shaun Norris – 58th
Prolific earner on the Japan Golf Tour, Norris is now SA’s third-highest ranked player after moving up 13 places from January until now.
Justin Harding – 71st
The Commercial Bank Qatar Masters winner is fourteen spots better off than he was on January 1.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout – 89th
From 521st to inside the top 100, safe to say Bezuidenhout has been the real winner according to the rankings.
Richard Sterne – 165th
276th at the start of the year, his run at the Abu Dhabi event early in the year helped spark a revival.
JC Ritchie – 173rd
One of the players to watch in 2020, Ritchie moved himself from 234th to comfortably inside the top 200 this year.
Thriston Lawrence – 268th
From languishing down near the 1000th mark, it has been a breakthrough year for Lawrence who claimed the Vodacom Origins Stellenbosch title.
LOSERS
Branden Grace – 122nd
He got into the 2019 Masters at the very end of last year but there was no such revival for Grace this season. He has endured a difficult campaign which included a number of caddie changes and has work to do to get back to his best.
Dylan Frittelli – 104th
It’s a been a good year on the course for Frittelli, who won for the first time on the PGA TOUR at the John Deere Classic. Despite two top 10s and a T11 since then, he has continued to slide down the rankings. From 76th in January, he is now outside the top 100 in the world.
Brandon Stone – 190th
It’s been a trying year for the former Scottish Open champion and his rankings have taken a southerly-dive as a result. He is 85 places further down than at the turn of the year.
Dean Burmester – 234th
He started the year in 147th place but has struggled to find the game that saw him challenge at the season-ending Race to Dubai finale 24 months ago.
Darren Fichardt – 385th
From 160th to more than 120 places lower down, the upcoming campaign will be an important one for Fichardt’s long stay in the top of the South African charts.
