Staff WriterLouis Oosthuizen returns to Royal Johannesburg next week with the kind of quiet confidence only a past champion can carry, and the presence of Louis Oosthuizen alone is usually enough to make the rest of the field stand a little straighter. This time, though, he’s bringing a cavalry with him.
The 2023 winner heads up a South African assault so deep it looks more like a national reunion than a golf tournament. Joining him on the East Course from 11–14 December are fellow former champions Branden Grace, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Brandon Stone, Richard Sterne, Shaun Norris and Ockie Strydom — a group responsible for seven of the past twelve Alfred Dunhill Championship titles. If there were any more previous winners in the field, they’d need a separate locker room.
And every one of them has the same target: becoming just the third player in tournament history to lift the trophy more than once. No sentiment, no ceremony — just a week of South African heavyweights trying to knock each other off the top step.
The home guard doesn’t stop there. PGA TOUR champion Aldrich Potgieter, alongside DP World Tour winners Dean Burmester and Thriston Lawrence, adds even more muscle to a field already built like a Springbok pack. If you’re a neutral, you’ll enjoy the spectacle. If you’re an international challenger, good luck.
One man who won’t be intimidated is Spain’s Pablo Larrazabal, the last European to rip this title from South African hands. His 2019 victory at Leopard Creek remains one of the grittiest in tournament folklore, sealed while — quite literally — walking on burning coals.
Larrazabal “battled through the pain of blistered feet to win at Leopard Creek,” and he arrives again with the memory of that triumph tucked neatly under his visor. He’s joined by England’s John Parry, who has quietly built one of the sturdier résumés in recent seasons. Parry finished runner-up here last year, backed it up with a tied-third at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, closed the DP World Tour season 11th on the Race to Dubai Rankings, and punched his ticket to the PGA TOUR for 2026.
Spain’s Angel Ayora and England’s Andy Sullivan also land in South Africa after top-30 Race to Dubai finishes — not favourites, perhaps, but certainly not tourists.
The stage is set for one of the feistiest Alfred Dunhill Championships in years: a surging home army stacked with past winners, a smattering of Europeans trying to halt the South African lockout, and a course that has never been known to hand out anything for free.
And somewhere in the mix — steady, unflustered, and built for this moment — is Louis Oosthuizen, the man the rest of the field would love to stop but can never quite shake.
