Goose Valley

Gary Player extended the old 9-hole course at Goose Valley to a full-blown 18-hole layout in 2003. The course sits adjacent to the Turtle Creek Golf Estate and both properties occupy a scenic spot that overlooks the Keurbooms River at the point where it flows into a lagoon before entering the Indian Ocean.

The quality of the bunkering – both greenside and on the fairways – is one of the main characteristics of this course and it goes without saying that the deep, straight-faced, revetted sand traps need to be avoided at all costs in order to score well here – even Gary Player in his prime would have struggled to escape from some of these pot bunkers.

Fairways are routed around stands of housing but thankfully the number of homes is relatively low, keeping residential intrusion to a minimum. On the other hand, the regional fynbos vegetation that flanks many of the fairways is so thick, balls straying too far off line will be lost forever.

Stand out holes on the front nine include the two par threes at the 2nd and 5th and the back-to-back par fives at holes 7 and 8. On the back nine, the toughest hole on the card is the 428-yard 10th and it precedes the signature par three 11th hole, where the green is guarded by a handful of those aforementioned fearsome bunkers.