Maccauvlei

Situated a forty-five minute drive south of Johannesburg, Maccauvlei Golf Club is one of the “lost” golf courses in the country. It has a great golfing pedigree as a former South African Open venue (the top national competition was held here four times between 1927 and 1949) yet it’s largely ignored nowadays by golfers from the metropolis.

Maccauvlei was designed by Englishmen George Peck and S.V Hotchkin in the 1920s and it lies on a sand belt, south of the Vaal River, making it feel more like a seaside links than a parkland course with the reputation of offering a stern test of golf.

Despite the fact it can now be stretched to over 7,500 yards to accommodate modern golfers, it remains largely in an 80-year old time warp, complete with a beautiful old-fashioned clubhouse that was constructed in 1925. The signature hole at Maccauvlei is the 465-yard, par four, 17th where the approach shot to an elevated green has to carry one of the biggest bunkers in South Africa – a 130-yard wall of sand.

In this short extract from the book he co-authored with Jamie Thom entitled South Africa’s Greatest Golf Destinations, Stuart McLean writes:

“There remains a historic look and timeless feel to Maccauvlei outside the town of Vereeniging, which more than any other contemporary club captures the zeitgeist of golf in South Africa between the two world wars. It was a period in which the club flourished, and its list of members included many leading business and political figures of the day, who travelled by train from Johannesburg to spend weekends at the club’s dormy house.”