SA golf sensation Aldrich Potgieter will return to the Nedbank Golf Challenge a year after almost winning it on debut when he joins the 2025 field for this DP World Tour event at Sun City on December 4-7.
He will be joined by multiple DP World Tour champion Christiaan Bezuidenhout, who returns to a Gary Player Country Club course where he won the 2020 SA Open.
The 20-year-old Potgieter was given a personal invitation by Gary Player, in whose honour the tournament is played, to compete in the 2024 Nedbank Golf Challenge and led by three strokes going into the final round before finishing tied second to Johannes Veerman.
This year he returns to the Gary Player Country Club as the youngest SA winner yet on the PGA Tour after his maiden win in the Rocket Classic in June, and as the highest-ranked SA golfer on the official world ranking just outside the top 50.
“My first experience of the Nedbank Golf Challenge last year was so memorable. I’ll never forget the crowds on the Saturday when I was leading, and the amazing support from the SA fans. To walk onto that first tee box and hear the cheers, and then to have Gary Player sitting there as well are some of my fondest golf memories.
“I can’t wait to get back to Sun City and experience it all again,” said Potgieter.
It’s been a meteoric rise for Potgieter, who only two years ago was still one of the top amateurs in the game. After turning professional he became the youngest Korn Ferry Tour winner yet at the age of 19 years, four months and 11 days in 2024, and then made his PGA Tour breakthrough this year.
The young South African, who has stunned world golf with his prodigious length off the tee, joins defending champion Veerman and fellow South African Daniel van Tonder, who qualified by virtue of his victory in last season’s Sunshine Tour Courier Guy Order of Merit, as among the early stars confirmed for “Africa’s Major”.
Bezuidenhout makes his fourth appearance in a tournament in which he has a strong record, having finished tied fifth in 2022 and tied sixth in 2024.
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