It’s his major championship debut, and Thriston Lawrence brings some good recent form with him into the 150th Open Championship which gets underway on the Old Course at St Andrews in Scotland on Thursday.
The 25-year-old South African finished right in the mix two weeks ago in the Horizon Scottish Open, when he carded 16-under-par to claim third place. And then he got some good links golf preparation in last week, closing with a 69 in the final round of the Genesis Scottish Open. Although that only gave him a share of 24th, he rose to a career-high 131st on the world rankings heading into the most important week in golf.
For the bookmakers, he’s an attractive long shot in the Open. They call him a “bang in-form South African whose stellar amateur career includes a Lytham Trophy. He’s got a bit of Old Course experience in the Dunhill Links, including a round of 66, and returns for his major debut as a rapidly-improving player with echoes of (Louis) Oosthuizen about him.”
For those who are not sure of his pedigree, it bears repeating that he won two consecutive South African Amateur Championships in 2013 and 2014, the first by a margin of 9&8, which was the biggest since 1980, and the second-biggest ever in the history of the tournament.
His win in the Lytham Trophy, an amateur golf tournament founded in 1965 by the Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club, where it has always been held, is the only one by a South African. It is a 72-hole scratch stroke play competition, and is classified as a Category A event by the World Amateur Golf Rankings.
Lawrence turned professional in 2014. He played on the MENA Tour in 2015 and the Challenge Tour in 2016. He won the MENA Tour Order of Merit in 2015, defeating an Open champion in Darren Clarke in his victory that year in the Ras al Kkaimah Classic. He played on the Big Easy Tour in 2018, gaining his card for the 2019-20 Sunshine Tour season. He won his first Sunshine Tour event in 2019 in the Vodacom Origins of Golf event at Stellenbosch.
He claimed the biggest victory of his career at the 2021 Joburg Open. It was a co-sanctioned European Tour and Sunshine Tour event. The event was shortened to 36 holes due to inclement weather. Lawrence shot two rounds of 65 to win by four shots over Zander Lombard.
His game is built around reliability when going for the green, which is going to be of paramount importance at St Andrews, no matter what the wind does during the four days of the championship.
Much will depend on how he deals with the butterflies he’s certain to feel when he tees off at nine minutes past one South African time with Paraguay’s Fabrizio Zanotti and Alex Wrigley of England. A few early birdies and he can get the bit between his teeth and reel off a low opening round.
From there, the sky is the limit for the Mbombela Golf Club honorary life member.
