Daniel Van Tonder

Van Tonder turned professional in 2011 and plays on the Sunshine Tour. He has won seven times on the tour; including twice in 2014, at the Investec Royal Swazi Open and the Vodacom Origins of Golf at Euphoria. He also won the Mopani Redpath Greendoor Logistics Zambia Open in 2019. In 2020, he won 4 tournaments on the Sunshine Tour in the space of 3 months.
First played on the European Tour in 2011 and has made the most of home advantage with multiple top-ten finishes in South African tournaments. Came through the GFG Academy in Centurion which clearly prepared him well for professional golf where Van Tonder has flourished. Since 2011 he has played in 49 events on the European Tour and won for the first time in 2021.
One of the big reasons for his success is his wife and caddie, Abi. They met at the Nelson Mandela Championship in 2013 and after a couple of years were engaged at the Nedbank Challenge in 2015. The romantic side of Daniel set up a helicopter ride to the Valley of a Thousand Hills in KwaZulu-Natal and while having a picnic on the mountain he proposed.
The marriage was a big help for Van Tonder who suffered immensely and sustained emotional trauma as a child and teenager. It carried over into his early professional career and it could quite easily have broken him. It was a very difficult time for him. The whole of 2015, 2016, and 2017 was especially bad and Abi helped him through it. At the same time when they got married, she started to caddie for him and has had a front-row seat to Daniel's transformation into a golfer and now a member of the European Tour.
2021 Notes: Played in 21 European Tour events making 10 cuts with one top-ten finish. Shot a final-round 64 at the Kenya Savannah Classic to tie Jazz Janewattananond and then beat him with a birdie on the third playoff hole. The victory was van Tonder's fifth in his last 13 worldwide starts and with it gained membership onto the European Tour. A month later was involved in another playoff, this time at the Limpopo Championship on the European Tour Challenge series. Lost in a four-hole playoff when Brandon Stone made a birdie at the first hole to win. Also played in the Bain's Whisky Cape Town Open finishing T-57th and missed the cut at the Dimension Data Pro-am, all three events were co-sanctioned on the Sunshine and European Challenge Tour. He was 75th in the Race to Dubai, he earned euro340,397. At the end of the year won the SA Open Championship on the Sunshine Tour. He shot a final round of 65 to win by a shot over Oliver Bekker.
2022 Notes: Best finish of the year, T-13th at the Ras Al Khaimah Championship