Lawrence part of strong SA challenge for Alfred Dunhill Links Championship

Thriston Lawrence will lead a strong SA challenge at next week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on the DP World Tour, with the South African heading to Scotland having just broken into the top 50 on the official world golf ranking.

Lawrence will tee it up in this festival of links golf as SA’s most in-form golfer at the moment after his recent playoff defeat in the BMW PGA Championship. It was his fifth runners-up finish on the DP World Tour this year and he is in second place on the Race to Dubai Rankings.

Louis Oosthuizen and Branden Grace will also form part of the SA challenge in Scotland, with both golfers sharing a strong personal connection to this tournament.

Grace, though struggling with his form at the moment, heads back to a tournament where he has the distinction of being the only South African to have won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in 2012, when he also became the youngest winner of this tournament at the age of 24.

Grace is also the only golfer to have won both this event and its sister tournament, the Alfred Dunhill Championship in SA in 2014.

Oosthuizen heads into next week’s tournament with a chance to match Grace’s Alfred Dunhill double, as the reigning champion of the Alfred Dunhill Championship.

A total of 34 South Africans are on the list of entries for this celebration of links golf, played on the three links courses of the Old Course, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie.

The tournament tees off next Thursday, and this year’s field includes defending champion Matt Fitzpatrick and other stars such as Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm, Shane Lowry, Tommy Fleetwood, Robert MacIntyre, Tyrrell Hatton, Danny Willett and Billy Horschel.

The popular pro-am tournament will also feature celebrities and sports stars such as Schalk Burger Jnr, Morné du Plessis, Rob Louw, Kelly Slater, Bill Murray, Andy Garcia, Huey Lewis, Ruud Gullit, Gareth Bale, Kathryn Newton and Kevin Pietersen.