Nedbank Golf Challenge 2025: Hot Higgo the sole selection in Sun City at 17/1

• GIR and Scrambling the key stats

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Tournament History

The Nedbank Golf Challenge was first played in 1981 when Johnny Miller pocketed the then huge purse of $500,000.

It remained an exclusive 12-man invitational up until 12 years ago when it became an official co-sanctioned Sunshine and DP World Tour event for an extended field of 30 before it underwent an even more expansive revamp in 2016 when the field was increased to 72.

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Venue

The Gary Player Country Club, Sun City, South Africa.

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Course Details

Par 72, 7,819 yards
Stroke index in 2024 - 73.22

Gary Player's lengthy creation is a parkland course set in an extinct volcanic crater. It has fairly narrow kikuyu fairways and kikuyu rough and the small well-bunkered, bent grass greens usually run at around 11 on the stimpmeter.

In addition to hosting this tournament since day one, the Gary Player Country Club also hosted the Dimension Data Pro-Am on South Africa's Sunshine Tour up until 2009, it was the venue for the Sun City Challenge between 2012 and 2019 and it's hosted a Stableford event called the Blue Label Challenge since 2021.

It was also the venue for the 2020 and 2021 editions of the South African Open, won by Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Daniel van Tonder.

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Weather Forecast 

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TV Coverage

Live on Sky Sports all four days, starting at 9:00 on Thursday in the UK.

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Last Eight Winners with Pre-event Exchange Prices

2024 - Johannes Veerman -5 50.049/1
2023 - Max Homa -19 11.010/1
2022 - Tommy Fleetwood -11 11.010/1
2020 & 21 - No event
2019 - Tommy Fleetwood -12 (playoff) 20.019/1
2018 - Lee Westwood -15 55.054/1
2017 - Branden Grace -11 18.017/1
2016 - Alex Noren -14 24.023/1
2015 - Marc Leishman -19 80.079/1

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What Will it Take to Win the Nedbank Golf Challenge?

Branden Grace's victory eight years ago was bizarre. He shot a six-over-par 42 on the front nine on Friday, he ranked 63^rd for Driving Distance, 54^th for Driving Accuracy, 31^st for Greens In Regulation and 12^th for Scrambling but he did putt well and he made more birdies than anyone else in the field.

Even so, after that 'hiccup' in round two and with stats that poor, it was a remarkable achievement so it's probably a renewal to ignore.

As it's at altitude, the ball travels around 10% further than it does at sea level, so Sun City doesn't play as long as the yardage suggests, but it's still a long course and getting it out there off the tee is important.

Last year's winner, Johannes Verrman, ranked 0^th for Driving Distance and the man that really should have won, Aldrich Potgeiter, ranked second for DD.

Length is marginally more important than accuracy off the tee, but you certainly can't just indiscriminately bash it anywhere and finding the fairways is important.

The Kikuyu rough is notoriously hard to play from and missing fairways with regularity makes it impossible to find the number of greens necessary to compete. Lee Westwood has always been regarded as one of the best drivers in the world so it's no coincidence that he's prospered here, winning the Nedbank three times in total.

Total Driving is a good stat to consider but Greens In Regulation and Scrambling are usually the most important.

The two South African Open winners here, Bezuidenhout and van Tonder, ranked first and ninth for Greens In Regulation and second and first for Scrambling, and the 2017 winner of this event, Grace, looks like a real anomaly because, the 10 Nedbank winners since it became a DP World Tour event have ranked fifth, second, eighth, fourth, 31^st, first, first, third, first and 14th. 

And although Grace only ranked 31^st in 2017, the next four on the leaderboard ranked fifth, first, 11^th and second so GIR is definitely a key stat.

Having ranked 17^th in 2022, Fleetwood only ranked 40^th for Scrambling in 2019 but the runner-up six years ago, Marcus Kinhult, ranked sixth, and Jason Scrivener and Bernd Wiesberger, who finished tied for third, ranked first and fourth.

The six Nedbank winners before Fleetwood ranked 13^th, first, first, third, 12^th and 14^th for Scrambling.

Veerman went against the grain as he only ranked 38^th but Matthew Jordan and Romain Langasque, who finished tied for second, ranked tied fourth for Scrambling and the pre-event favourite, Corey Connors, who finished sixth, topped the Scrambling stats.

Homa ranked second when he won two years ago, and as already mentioned, Bezuidenhout and van Tonder ranked second and first.

Bezuidenhout and van Tonder both ranked first for Par 4 Scoring, as did Veerman and Homa, and Fleetwood ranked second in 2022 but historically, making hay on the par fives has been crucial here and five of the last nine Nedbank winners played the long holes better than anyone else in the field. 

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Is There an Angle In?

This used to be a notoriously bad event for debutants and not just because there were only one or two in the small fields of 12.

Back in 2012, five of the 12 were making their debut but only one of the five, Bill Haas, who finished third, finished inside the top-six and in 2013 more than half the field were playing Sun City for the first time and yet only one of them, Brendon de Jonge, managed to finish inside the top-six but all that changed when it became a DP World Tour event 12 years ago.

The 2013 winner, Thomas Bjorn, had only ever played Sun City twice before and that was in the last century in the Dimension Data, 16 years prior to his win, so he can't have been too familiar with the venue.

The next three winners, as well as the 2016 runner-up, Jeunghun Wang, who traded at around 1.330/100 in-running, were all playing the course for the first time, as was Homa when he won two years ago, and on his only previous visit, back in 2020, last year's winner, Veerman, had missed the cut so course experience really isn't key anymore.

From a course form correlation perspective, a number of course winners (and seconds) have form at three other tracks.

Wentworth, the home of the BMW PGA Championship, Doha, home of the Qatar Masters, and le Golf National, the usual home of the Open de France.

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Is There an Identikit Winner?

Multiple winners are fairly common. When winning three years ago, Fleetwood became the ninth man to win the event twice, the seventh to successfully defend the title and four men - David Frost, Nick Price, Ernie Els, and Lee Westwood - have all won the event three times.

This hasn't been a good event for outsiders. Veerman was a 50.049/1 chance 12 months ago, Westwood went off at 55.054/1 in 2018 and Leishman was matched at 80.079/1 when he won here a decade ago, but he was the biggest priced winner in many a year, so long-shots have a poor record.

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Winner's Position and Exchange Price Pre-Round Four

2024 - Johannes Veerman - T7th - trailing by five 40.039/1
2023 - Max Homa - Led by one 2.111/10
2022 - Tommy Fleetwood - T7th - trailing by three 19.018/1
2019 - Tommy Fleetwood - T12th - trailing by six 90.089/1
2018 - Lee Westwood T3rd - trailing by three 12.523/2
2017 - Branden Grace T3rd - trailing by three 5.69/2
2016 - Alex Noren - T4th - trailing by six 22.021/1
2015 - Marc Leishman - led by a stroke 2.3211/8

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In-Play Tactics

In its old, limited field format very few winners came from off the pace in the Nedbank but that made sense. Not only were they small fields but they were small fields containing very high-quality golfers. The very best would separate themselves from the majority in the small field and more often than not, that would be that but since the format has changed and the fields have been expanded, a new pattern has emerged...

The classy Homa won from the front two years ago but the five Nedbank winners before him trailed by six, three, three, six and three strokes with a round to go and last year's winner was five adrift with 18 to play.

With the larger fields we're seeing a very different pattern and players going odds-on and getting beat is now commonplace.

For example, Potgeiter, who led by three after 54 holes last year, was matched at odds-on after he'd parred the first two holes on Sunday and he was matched at as low as 1.422/5 with just seven holes to play before he triple-bogeyed the par three 12^th.

It's a really tough golf course and your game can unravel fast so it's a great place to take on short ones in-running.

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Hot Higgo the sole selection in Sun City

Despite having never played the Gary Player Country Club before, Viktor Hovland is the understandable favourite.

The classy Norwegian arrives after reasonable efforts in England and India where he finished fifth in the BMW PGA Championship and sixth in the India Championship but the hottest man in the field this week is the South African course winner, Garrick Higgo.

This is Higgo's first appearance in the Nedbank, but this is his fourth visit to the venue.

He missed the cut in the South African Open in both 2020 and 2021, but he won the Sun City Challenge here on the Sunshine Tour in his first start since winning on the Big Easy Tour in 2019.

He wasn't in great form before either of his South African Open appearances so given he's the type to telegraph a victory, I'm happy to overlook those two performances at the track and take the 17/1 available on the Exchange.

After a quiet spell following his win at the Corales Puntacana Championship in April, Higgo has followed a missed cut at the Wyndham Championship in August with a seventh place finish in the Procore Championship, a runners-up finish in the Sanderson Farms Championship and two fourth placed finishes in-a-row, at the Baycurrent Classic in Japan in October and in the World Wide Technology Championship in Mexico in November.

That's an elite level of form on the PGA Tour that commands respect and the fact that he's a consistently good scrambler, and that he's ranked 14^th, fourth, 15^th and fourth for Putting Average in each of those last four starts, bodes well.

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