The Nedbank Golf Challenge 2025 is set to tee off next weekend from December 4-7 at the Gary Player CC, Sun City, South Africa. The $6M prize event, popularly known as Africa’s Major, will feature a stacked field competing for the winner’s paycheck and 1000 Race to Dubai points. Ahead of the event’s start, event reserve Joost Luiten has called out the circuit for denying direct entry to the field.
For the unversed, Luiten has been kept as a standby on the Nedbank Golf Challenge list despite collecting three top-5 finishes on the 2025 DP World Tour season. He sat 33rd in the season-long Race To Dubai standings, only to enter the event as a first reserve. According to the European Tour-sanctioned event’s rulebook, the six-time Tour winner’s exclusion comes down to qualification criteria.
According to the rules, any player who has won a DP World Tour event with a $2 million purse from 2024 to 2026 qualifies for the Nedbank Golf Challenge. Luiten, despite having a strong season, failed to win an event all year. Notably, the Dutch golfer’s last win came in 2018, when he won the NBO Oman Open.
Listed below is the complete qualification system breakdown for the Nedbank Golf Challenge:
- Up to 10 available players from the FedExCup top-70 after the 2025 PGA Tour playoffs
- The winner of the 2024/2025 Sunshine Tour Order of Merit
- Five discretionary pro tournament invitations, including Major champions or top-ranked players
- 2026 DP World Tour Exemption Categories list, prioritizing higher-ranked players
Owing to the African Major’s qualification criteria, several players who finished worse than Joost Luiten in the 2025 Race to Dubai standings have found themselves in the opening field. The 39-year-old has since called out the DP World Tour’s ‘inconsistent’ rule.
How did Joost Luiten perform in his last three DP World Tour starts?
Joost Luiten’s last event was the DP World Tour Championship, where Luiten secured 48th place on the tournament leaderboard. He scored 1 over in total and shot 71 in the opening round of the tournament with three birdies on the back nine. In the next round, he fired 73 with one birdie on the front nine and one birdie on the back nine.
In the third and fourth rounds, Luiten scored 71 and 74 with three and five birdies, respectively. His second-to-last event was the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, where he landed at T41 with a total score of 11 under. In the opening round, he scored 68 with three birdies on the front nine and two birdies on the back nine.
In the second round, he fired 71 with three birdies on the front nine and two birdies on the back nine. The third round saw 72 with three birdies, and the fourth round saw 66 with six birdies. Joost Luiten’s third-to-last tournament was the Korea Championship, where he finished tied for 14th with a score of 5 under.
Joost Luiten shot 71 with three birdies on the front nine and one birdie on the back nine. He fired 69 with four birdies on the front nine and two birdies on the back nine. The third round saw 72 with three birdies on the front nine and one birdie on the back nine. The golfer scored 67 with two birdies on the front nine and three birdies on the back nine.