Johannesburg (Rocklands)

For over a hundred years now, the Country Club Johannesburg has provided a wide range of sporting activities for its members at Auckland Park and Woodmead, its two recreation complexes. Auckland Park focuses on cricket, bowls and racquet sports whilst golf is the main sport at Woodmead where the club is the proud owner of two magnificent 18-hole courses.

“Country Club has an unusual history by local golfing standards,” wrote Stuart McLean in the book he co-authored with Jamie Thom entitled South Africa’s Greatest Golf Destinations. ”It is the only old historic club that moved to a new site in the modern era of the game,” continued Stuart in this brief edited extract.

“While other older clubs had established themselves on existing properties early in the 20th century, Country Club members played golf on the outskirts of Johannesburg for more than sixty years before moving to the Kyber Rock area in 1970.

This intelligent, forward-thinking decision by the golfing committee to leave their home club and set up a new 18-hole course in rural farmland paid rich dividends for future generations of members. They acquired enough land that Country Club could build a second course, Rocklands, with space to spare.”

The Rocklands layout is the newer of the two courses and its more open fairways are the perfect foil to the tougher, tighter Woodmead track. In the early 1990s, Martin Hawtree added nine new holes to the former 9-hole Woodlands course his father had designed for the club almost twenty years previously, creating the Rocklands layout. Golf Data has since upgraded both 18-hole courses, introducing USGA-specification greens.

On the Rocklands layout, many cite the two water-protected holes at 5 and 7 – the former a right doglegged par four, the latter a treacherous par five – as the most memorable on the front nine. On the inward half, tee shots at the short 15th and 17th must carry water all the way to the green – even if golf balls remain dry, they must also avoid some well-placed sand traps surrounding the putting surfaces.