Defending champion Keita Nakajima will lead a strong field at the Hero Indian Open with as many as 16 winners from the last and current season of the DP World Tour (DPWT) featuring in the tournament. The event, starting March 27, will have a dozen winners from the 2024 DPWT schedule and they will be joined by the four champions from the 2025 schedule at the DLF Golf and Country Club in Gurugram. The field includes Germany's Marcel Siem, the tournament winner from 2023, who won another title in 2024. DLF Golf and Country Club will host the event for the seventh time.
The 24-year-old Nakajima, a former Asia-Pacific Amateur champion, was the World No. 1 amateur for a record total of 87 weeks between November 2020 and September 2022.
In 2023, Nakajima won three titles on the Japan Tour and went on to top the Japan Tour Order of Merit, by virtue of which he earned a card to the DPWT 2024 season.
In his very first full season on DPWT, Nakajima won the Indian Open after beating the trio of India's Veer Ahlawat, Sweden's Sebastian Soderberg and American Johannes Veerman.
The three runner-ups are all coming back to have a shot at one of the iconic events of the region.
Nakajima is also hoping to emulate a fellow Japanese player, Kenji Hosoishi, who became the first player to win the India Open title back-to-back in 1967 and 1968.
Since then, Jyoti Randhawa (2006 and 2007) and SSP Chawrasia (2016 and 2017) have also achieved the feat.
Nakajima is not the only former World No. 1 amateur in the field who has had success in India. The field also includes American Ollie Schniederjans, who was World Amateur No. 1 for a straight 41 weeks in 2014-2015.
Schniederjans recently ended a nine-year title drought winning the International Series India presented by DLF, held at the same venue.
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