Championship Format
The Alfred Dunhill Championship is an official co-sanctioned Order of Merit event on the DP World Tour and Sunshine Tour. A total of 156 professionals play the 72-hole stroke play championship, with 18 holes played each day.
If a playoff is required, it will be sudden death over the 18th hole. Play is in three-balls over the first two days, and in two-balls on the last two days after the cut.
A pro-am takes place on the Tuesday before the tournament.
Prize Money
The Alfred Dunhill Championship features a selection of the finest professionals on the Sunshine Tour and DP World Tour competing for a total purse of €1.5 million (approximately R26.8 million).
The Alfred Dunhill Championship enthrals world golf as one of the most unique tournaments on the Sunshine Tour and DP World Tour when it is played at the magnificent Leopard Creek Country Club.
The incredible setting of the golf course on the banks of the Crocodile River and overlooking the Kruger National Park, one of the world’s most iconic game reserves, makes the Alfred Dunhill Championship one of the flagship events on both Tours and a favourite of the world’s leading professionals.
Championship History
The Alfred Dunhill Championship has an illustrious history with a list of former World Number One golfers, Major winners, Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup players having played in the tournament over the years.
Alfred Dunhill’s support of golf in South Africa includes the sponsorship of the Alfred Dunhill PGA Championship at Houghton Golf Club from 1996 to 1999, whose winners include Ernie Els, Nick Price and Tony Johnstone. This was one of the first tournaments the European Tour ever co-sanctioned globally, thus helping to launch the Tour’s highly successful co-sanctioning strategy. In 2000, the Alfred Dunhill Championship teed off at Houghton Golf Club as a standalone tournament, before moving to its current home at Leopard Creek in 2004.
The Alfred Dunhill Championship has hosted a list of former World Number One golfers, Major winners, Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup players over the years, including Rory McIlroy, John Daly, Ernie Els, Lee Westwood, Darren Clarke, Trevor Immelman, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace.
Three renowned names recorded their first professional wins at the Alfred Dunhill Championship – former Masters champion Adam Scott in 2001, Justin Rose in 2002, and four-time Alfred Dunhill Championship winner Charl Schwartzel in 2004.
Branden Grace is the only player to have achieved the double of winning both the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
Fellow South African, Charl Schwartzel, has won a record four Alfred Dunhill Championship titles claiming victory in 2004, 2012, 2013 and 2015. In 2012, he won by a record 12-shot margin, recording a superb 24-under par score, which so far has not been beaten. Amazingly, he has also finished runner-up four times at Leopard Creek.
One of the primary beneficiaries of Alfred Dunhill’s proud history in golf is the South African Golf Development Board (SAGDB). Both the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and the Alfred Dunhill Championship donate tournament proceeds to the SAGDB.
The Harold Riley Alfred Dunhill Collection
For more than 25 years, artist Harold Riley captured on canvas the landscapes, people, wildlife and history that made Alfred Dunhill golf championships so unique.
His death in April 2023, at the age of 88, was a sad moment for the worlds of art and golf, but he leaves behind a memorable gallery of works, commissioned by the Alfred Dunhill Championship, which recreates the essence of the event, particularly as it unfolds over the glorious Leopard Creek.
Many of Harold’s paintings, featuring his own inimitable style, have graced the Championship over the years, giving it a timeless backdrop; even turning the invitations, which go out to golfers around the world, into works of art.
Harold was born in Salford in 1934 and in 1951 he won a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He went on to study in Italy and Spain before returning to Salford.
He believed his main work was to document the city, and his life-cycle in Salford, in paintings, drawings and photographs, cemented a friendship with L.S. Lowry which began when Harold was a student. Together they worked on a project to record the area and its people. Away from golf, among Harold’s best known works are portraits of Nelson Mandela, Prince Philip, Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II and American Presidents John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford.
Sponsors
The Alfred Dunhill Championship is delighted to be partnered with:
