Ah, Dezemba. Another unique South African word. Like boerewors, braaivleis, Ubuntu. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you are South African you’ll know there is no place like home.

It’s the time to kick off your shoes and pull on the flip flops, tan some coals and be with family and friends. Just like Thriston Lawrence will be doing.

Whether it’s bass fishing with his father on Loskop Dam, or hitting a few golf balls in the bush, wearing shorts, flops, T-shirt and cap, this is how we do it, including the best golfer in South Africa.

Although his year ends after the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek, Lawrence was on track to finish 2024 as the highest-ranked South African golfer in the world. If he achieved this, he would become the seventh such player to have that honour in the past 30 years. Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Charl Schwartzel, Louis Oosthuizen, Branden Grace and Dean Burmester have all held that No 1 end-of-year slot since 1994.

Lawrence has long been one of the stars of South African golf, rising through the amateur ranks before signing his pro papers as a bespectacled 17-year-old.

“College golf was never ever in my mind, so I decided I’d rather go the route of struggling early in my pro career and working my way up. I think it’s a personality thing – you look at their schedule and they play 12 events in a year. I was used to playing 35 events, and I didn’t want to do anything but play golf,” he wrote on his DP World Tour blog.

With two DP World Tour wins in 2022, matched by another two in 2023, Lawrence was the man to watch in 2024. He started the year ranked 81st in the world and by the time the marquee tents had been packed away after the Nedbank Golf Challenge, where he finished tie-14th behind Johannes Veerman, he had risen to No 46. That equalled the career-high spot he hit at the beginning of October.

Up to the Alfred Dunhill Championship, the penultimate stop on the DP World Tour in 2024, only Dylan Frittelli had won a title from a South African perspective, but it was Lawrence’s consistency that resulted in rewards less tangible but more satisfying.

He earned that prized PGA Tour card – "the ultimate goal" is how he describes it – for finishing third on the Race To Dubai rankings behind Rory McIlroy and Rasmus Højgaard, and now has dual membership on the two major men’s Tours on the calendar. “I’m definitely not done in Europe, but I will take some time to work hard in the US,” he wrote on his Instagram page before his return home.

It was when he arrived home that he celebrated his 28th birthday. Yes, still only 28. He was a pro at 17, won the MENA Tour Order of Merit at 18, earned his Sunshine Tour card for 2019-20 by winning the Tour’s Q-School in 2018 and promptly won the 2019 Vodacom Origins of Golf at Stellenbosch at 22. His 2021 Joburg Open win secured him his DP World Tour playing rights, and more success followed, including the 2022 SA Open, a day after he turned 26.

In terms of World Ranking points’ weighting, Lawrence produced four of the best 10 performances in his career in 2024 – tie-second at the European Open, second at the British Masters, tie-second at the BMW PGA Championship and fourth at The Open Championship at Royal Troon.

At The Open, he had weekend rounds of 65 and 68 to finish on 278, one shot behind runners-up Billy Horschel and Justin Rose, and three strokes behind Xander Schauffele. For large chunks of that Sunday, 21 July, the dream was on for Lawrence. A birdie at the par-four 7th put him into a three-way tie for first and then stepping on to the 12th tee, he had a one-shot lead. The engraver hadn’t quite started his job, but he would have been looking up to see if his spelling of Thriston was the correct one. However, a bogey on that par-four 12th, just as Schauffele was starting a run of four birdies in six holes, turned the tide.

The 28-year-old doesn’t quite know how he got his name, saying it was taken from a movie, but he can’t recall which one. Given he was born in 1996, it could well have been Legends of the Fall, which came to South Africa in 1995 and where Brad Pitt brilliantly played Tristan Ludlow. The movie had such an impact that spin-offs of Tristan made it one of the more popular boys' baby names in the US at the time.

Now Americans are going to have to get used to the variation Thriston.

"I played with Thriston at The Open, where he impressed me with how aggressive he is," said Horschel. “He’s a terrific ball striker, especially with the irons. I can see him doing really well on the PGA Tour. Like just about anyone, it is in the short game where he will need to improve most. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see him win… I expect him to have a good season and be a real contender for Rookie of the Year.”

First things first, though. Fishing rod, braai tongs and flip flops.

IMAGES: TYRONE WINFIELD/CARL FOURIE/PETRI OESCHGER/SUNSHINE TOUR/GREIG COWIE/SHUTTERSTOCK/PA/BACKPAGEPIX