With his third HotelPlanner Tour title of the season at the Hainan Open, Renato Paratore secured a guaranteed return to the DP World Tour.
The Italian became the second player in as many events to seal automatic promotion after JC Ritchie of South Africa did so at the Italian Challenge Open in September.
For the second season in a row, with two events still to play on the HotelPlanner Tour in 2025, at least two players have secured three triumphs in a single campaign after Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and John Parry last year.
Here, we chart the season so far of both Paratore and Ritchie, who are now planning towards elevating their game on golf’s global Tour.
Renato Paratore
• Age: 28
• HotelPlanner Tour titles in 2025: UAE Challenge, Abu Dhabi Challenge, Hainan Open
• Road to Mallorca Ranking: 3 (as of October 13th)
Highly touted as an amateur, he won his first DP World Tour title at the Nordea Masters in 2017, before he added a second at the British Masters in 2020. Since then, he has endured more heartbreak than most, losing his full playing privileges in 2022 by one spot, before weeks later finishing as the first man on the wrong side of the line again at Qualifying School. A familiar name to many, he earned status back for 2024 and is now returning to the DP World Tour at the first time of asking having finished 131st on the Race to Dubai Rankings to lose his card last year.
He does so largely thanks to a two-week stint of perfection in the United Arab Emirates in April. A faultless closing 65 helped him end a near five-year wait without a victory at the UAE Challenge, before he went on to triumph at the Abu Dhabi Challenge. After splitting his time between the HotelPlanner Tour and the DP World Tour over the opening months of the season, taking up playing opportunities on the latter when they arose, his success saw him make a big leap up the Road to Mallorca Rankings, rising from 72nd to second over the two-week period in the Middle East. Ever since, a return to the DP World Tour has appeared all but confirmed. After briefly topping the season-long rankings in June, he has added further top tens in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands before his third success in China saw him become the second player this season to qualify for immediate graduation.
However, he has opted not to take up the chance to play at either the DP World India Championship or the Genesis Championship in South Korea, and instead will compete at this week’s Hangzhou Open and the HotelPlanner Tour’s season-ending Rolex Grand Final supported by The R&A.
JC Ritchie
• Age: 31
• HotelPlanner Tour titles in 2025: German Challenge powered by VcG, Open de Portugal at Royal Óbidos, Italian Challenge Open
• Road to Mallorca Ranking: 1 (as of October 13th)
Another player making their return to the DP World Tour, having last held a card in 2023 as a then graduate of the HotelPlanner Tour. A top ten at the Barracuda Championship in the United States was not enough to help him retain his playing privileges, but after a memorable year he should take immense belief into the upcoming new campaign on the DP World Tour.
Two top tens on home soil across the opening four events of the Road to Mallorca schedule provided the basis for what has since followed, with a runner-up finish at the UAE Challenge lifting him to sixth in the rankings. After finishing in a tie for third in Austria in July, later that month he won in Germany to propel him to second. He opted to return home to South Africa for a month, before returning to action in Sweden. While he missed the cut there, it wasn’t long before he was back in the groove. After edging out David Law to win his second title of the season in Portugal, a week later he made it back-to-back titles in Italy to secure automatic promotion while also climbing to the summit of the rankings for the first time. Coincidentally, he also won back-to-back events in 2022 on his way to promotion that season.
Now a seven-time winner on the HotelPlanner Tour, he is joint second for most wins and will have his sights firmly set on finishing as the Road to Mallorca champion when the top 45 compete at the season finale next month.
