Top 100 Golf Courses of South Africa 2024

Other Top Course to Consider in the Western Cape The Western Cape of South Africa, renowned for its stunning landscapes and vibrant culture, also stands out as a premier destination for golf enthusiasts. The region boasts a diverse range of world-class golf courses, each offering unique challenges and spectacular views. From the rolling greens nestled against mountain backdrops to coastal links with panoramic ocean vistas, the Western Cape's golf courses are as much a feast for the eyes as they are a test of skill. This area not only attracts seasoned golfers but also offers a welcoming atmosphere for beginners looking to experience the sport in one of the most picturesque parts of the world. Overview of Notable Golf Courses in the Western Cape Fancourt (Links) - Often referred to as the crown jewel of South African golf, Fancourt Links is a meticulously designed course that pays homage to the traditional links courses of Scotland and Ireland. Created by the legendary Gary Player, this course is known for its undulating, windswept terrain and challenging layout, making it a favourite for major golf tournaments and discerning players. Fancourt (Montagu) - Another Gary Player masterpiece, the Montagu course at Fancourt is famed for its beautiful fairways and strategic bunkering. This parkland course blends seamlessly into the landscape, featuring stunning views of the Outeniqua Mountains and perfectly manicured greens. It provides a challenging yet enjoyable game for golfers of all skill levels. Pearl Valley - Set in the picturesque Paarl-Franschhoek Valley, Pearl Valley is renowned for its pristine conditioning and the stunning setting of the Winelands. Designed by Jack Nicklaus, the course features a layout that's both challenging and rewarding, with water hazards and bunkers that demand strategic play. The signature 13th hole is a highlight, offering both risk and reward in equal measure. Arabella - Located near Hermanus, Arabella Golf Club is often rated among the top courses in South Africa. It is particularly famous for its challenging back nine and spectacular finishing holes that overlook the Bot River Lagoon. The course's natural beauty is complemented by a layout that takes full advantage of the varied terrain, providing a test for golfers who enjoy a course that requires thoughtful navigation. Pinnacle Point - Situated on the Mossel Bay coastline, Pinnacle Point is a breathtakingly beautiful course that offers sweeping views of the Indian Ocean. This cliff-top course is known for its dramatic elevation changes and challenging holes, particularly those that run along the precipice of the ocean cliffs. The course's design leverages the natural landscape to offer a unique golfing experience that is both visually striking and challenging. These courses not only highlight the best of golf in the Western Cape but also encapsulate the spirit of South African golf: challenging, beautiful, and unforgettable. Whether you're a serious golfer seeking a test or a casual player looking to enjoy a round in a picturesque setting, the Western Cape offers some of the best golfing experiences in the world. Find out more about travel toErinvale Why not register today to be the 1st to Receive Worldwide Rankings releases for 2024. Lockhart Travel Club Concierge Services FAQ What is the Lockhart Travel Club? Lockhart Travel Club is dedicated to offering its members unique opportunities for world-class golf exploration and adventure. It connects members with like-minded individuals worldwide, aiming to fulfil their desire to play at the best golf courses globally. The club originated from Robert Lockhart's passion, a Scotsman who introduced golf to America in the late 19th century, and it continues to embody his spirit of golf travel​ (Lockhart Travel Club)​. Who are the members of the Lockhart Travel Club? Members are individuals from some of the world's greatest clubs, sharing a common passion for golf and adventure. The club welcomes golfers eager to travel, play, and check off their bucket list of courses. They are driven by the opportunity to see and play the best courses worldwide, taking advantage of the club's network​. What kind of experiences does Lockhart Travel Club offer? In 2023, the club provided opportunities to play in various top-ranked courses and locations, including the Sand Hills of Nebraska and Colorado, the best of Japan and Korea, the English Heathlands, the classic courses of France, and the best of New Zealand’s North Island. The 2024 schedule promises unique experiences in 19 different countries, including Thailand & China, Brazil, South Africa, the Northeast USA, and Australia​. How do I join Lockhart Travel Club? Interested individuals can inquire about membership by contacting the club directly via their official email. The club values connections among golf enthusiasts and strives to plan unique, unforgettable opportunities for its members throughout the year​. For more detailed inquiries or to apply for membership, please refer directly to the Lockhart Travel Club's official website or contact their membership services. Lockhart Travel Club About Us: Learn more about the club Top 100 Golf Courses - Lockhart Travel Club: Explore member experiences and trips

Top 100 Golf Courses of South Africa 2021 We’ve been ranking courses in South Africa for more than a decade now and this is the 6th edition of our listings for the Rainbow Nation. We expanded our coverage to a Top 100 in 2012 and have since added provincial subdivisions across nine geographical regions within the country which now allows us to feature an additional forty layouts that miss out on a position in the national chart. Our valued correspondent Stuart McLean, who for many years operated the SA Golf Digest Top 100 when he was editor of the magazine, assists with our efforts to showcase the best golfing tracks in his homeland and we’re grateful for his continued support. Stuart, and others around the country, keeps us up to date with developments that might not get reported in the mainstream media. And so, without any more of a preamble, it’s time to take a look at our latest chart for South Africa, where 46 courses move up, 41 fall down, 5 remain as they were and 8 new entries replace the same number of drop outs. A few of the upward moves are spectacular and we’ll take a closer look at them later but first let’s salute our new #1 which takes over the top spot from the Links at Fancourt. Rising one position to No.1, the Country Club course at Durban Country Club has previously been ranked in our World Top 100 so we’ve no doubts about the merits of it being named South Africa's leading golf venue for the first time. At the end of next year, it’ll be exactly 100 years since the course was first set out by leading professionals George Waterman and Laurie Waters so it has truly stood the test of time. Durban Country Club - Country Club course Recent favourable review comments for the Country Club course include “this is a great club to visit… the facilities are pretty near perfect… the course is tough but fair, with a great variety of holes… there are undulations that create interest and give a bit of an added dimension… hit it straight and hope the wind isn’t howling… can’t wait to go back!” Six other courses move upwards in the Top 10, and the most impressive of these advances is made by St Francis Links, a Jack Nicklaus Signature Course that first opened for play in 2007, which rises three places to #4. The holes are laid out within a stretch of dunes that runs for kilometres along the coast, with fairways playing to wonderfully contoured greens complexes and beautiful bent grass playing surfaces. Links purists might frown at the water hazards on the property but these are entirely natural, due to the Sand River flowing through the property. St Francis Links The other big mover in the upper echelons of the chart is the course at Sishen Golf Club in the mining town of Kathu in Northern Cape, which climbs seven spots to #17 to reverse a fall of seven when we last revised the chart. Laid out within a massive Camelthorn forest on the southern edge of the Kalahari Desert, the course was one of the last designs of Bob Grimsdell in the late 1970s when he was in his 80s. It’s quite a remote place to visit but well worth the effort to get there to play such a unique track. Sishen Golf Club Three 18-hole layouts make prodigious strides forward to enter the top half of the standings. The first member of this trio is the Rocklands course at the Country Club of Johannesburg (up thirty-one spots to #30), host venue for the South African Amateur championship in 2013. Fred Hawtree designed 27 holes for the club in the late 1960s, with eighteen of them designated as the Woodmead course. Fred’s son Martin then added nine holes to his father’s “spare” 9-hole layout in the early 1990s to fashion the Rocklands course and Sean Quinn from Golf Data subsequently upgraded the bunkers and the greens in the new millennium. Country Club of Johannesburg - Rocklands course At #31, only one position lower in the chart, the course at Pretoria Country Club soars twenty-six places to its new slot in the standings. The Tshwane Open was played here as a co-sanctioned tournament on the Sunshine Tour and European Tour from 2015 to 2018 and the bent grass greens on all the holes have since been restored. It was described by a reviewer a while back as “a beautiful Old Lady – ‘old’ because it is from 1910, and ‘lady’ because there are no straight lines or sharp corners.” Pretoria Country Club Occupying the next rung on the ladder at #32, the course at Clovelly Country Club in Cape Town also leaps ahead with a twenty-place surge. The club dates back to the early 1930s, when Charles Molteno Murray laid out the course for the two owners who’d purchased what was formerly the “Klein Tuin” farm. A reviewer concluded his post after playing here a few months ago by writing: “given the views, the wind, the peacocks, the colour and contrast of the surrounds, this is one course you’ll never get bored of playing.” Clovelly Country Club There are also several significant climbers in the bottom half of the table. The 18-hole layout at Killarney Country Club (up seventeen to #57) is the only Robert Trent Jones-designed course in South Africa. The club was about to lose a large portion of its property in the late 1960s due to the routing of the M1 motorway through Johannesburg so the architect was flown in from America to redesign the eighteen holes. Apparently, he charged the club less than his usual fee on the understanding that other design work would materialize for him but this never happened. Killarney Country Club Mbombela Golf Club (up eighteen to #58) was formerly known as Nelspruit up until 2017, when the club changed its title to reflect the renaming of the city eight years earlier. The course dates back to 1939, when Bob Grimsdell planned eighteen holes for the local municipal authority and charged a mere £37 for his efforts. Nine holes were built by 1943 but it took another twenty-five years before the full course was brought into play. Peter Matkovich then upgraded the layout in the late 1990s when the property was redeveloped for residential purposes. Mbombela Golf Club The course at St Francis Bay Golf Club (up twenty-four to #75) was doubled in size to its current eighteen holes in the late 1990s, with all the upgrade work financed by members who injected capital into the project by purchasing life memberships. The course continues to thrive, two decades on, with a reviewer at the end of last year calling it “a fun course to play… in decent condition and good bent grass greens… quite a short course with some interest and intriguing holes… perfect for fun holiday golf.” St Francis Bay Golf Club Centurion Country Club (up nineteen to #79) boasts a Peter Matkovich design from the late 1990s as part of a large golf estate between Sandton and Pretoria, with water coming into play on more than half the holes. The club decided to re-sequence the closing holes on both nines a couple of years ago so the old 8th and 9th are now the 17th and 18th, which makes for an exciting finish with an island green on the new penultimate hole and a risk-reward short par four for the home hole. There are eight new entries in the listings, led by Goldfields West Golf Club at #76. It’s yet another design from the prolific Bob Grimsdell, who set out the course for the local mine in the late 1940s. With holes routed around a nature reserve, not a lot has changed here in more than seventy years. The property was bought by long-time club member Hans Vierra recently and he has provided much-needed investment for both the clubhouse and the course. To view the complete detailed list of our latest Top 100 Golf Courses of South Africa click the link. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses

Top 100 Golf Courses of South Africa 2016 We announce the third biennial revision of our South African Top 100 ranking chart Two years ago, when we last updated our South African Top 100 chart, we stated, “this latest list will raise a few eyebrows”. Well, the results of the 2016 re-ranking exercise for the Rainbow Nation will do that and a lot more besides because there’s plenty of movement in our new chart – indeed, only two courses hold onto the same position as last time. We don’t know the statistical probability of that happening, actually. Suffice to say, bringing an ever-increasing number of different data streams into the process appears to be at least partly responsible for the volatility of our current chart and it might take another revision or two for the relative positions to settle down a little. So, onto our 2016 listings and it’s all change at the top, where three 18-hole layouts all leapfrog over our long standing No.1 course, Gary Player’s Leopard Creek, which is situated on the edge of the Kruger National Park. The course’s relatively prosaic front nine holes are a bit of a let-down for the more well-travelled golfers who’ve played the course and this may well have been a deciding factor in the course taking a tumble from the top perch. Rising one place to the new number 1 position, the Links course at Fancourt Hotel & Country Club is another Gary Player design that opened for play a couple of years before it hosted the Presidents Cup in 2003. Eight straight 6-ball reviews on the Top 100 website tell its own story and the latest reviewer to play here describes the Links course as “right up there with the very best courses I have played around the world”. Shooting up five places to the runner-up position, Durban Country Club returns to the number 2 spot that it held when we first established our South African chart in 2008. Our US Consultant Fergal O’Leary played there eight months ago when he completed his challenge of playing all of GOLF Magazine’s World’s Top 100 Golf Courses and he summed up his views of Durban by saying: “for keen golfers around the world, a round at the Durban Country Club is an experience not to be missed”. At number 3 in our new chart, rising two places, the Gary Player course at the Sun City Resort is another Black Knight design that returns to its inaugural chart position of eight years ago. The home of the Nedbank Golf Challenge since 1981, this fabulous course is instantly recognisable to golfers around the world who follow on television every year the exploits of a limited field of invited professionals competing for a huge prize pot. Two other courses make significant upward moves at the top end of the new standings. The first one is Humewood, near Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, soaring eleven places to number 7 and this 1929 design from SV Hotchkin – the only true links in all of Africa – is one that has flown under the radar of many golfers for a long time now. The second layout is the very private Millvale course in Koster – which was a new entry in our 2014 chart at number 14 – and it climbs a further four places to number 10. Perhaps we’ll receive our first review for this remarkable course before our next biennial update? A little further down the rankings, the remote Northern Cape course of Sishen (Robert Grimsdell’s last design from the late 1970s) lies close to the Kalahari desert in the mining town of Kathu and it leaps an impressive nine places to number 17. Moving up five to number 20, the old course at East London is actually the club’s third layout, having been established thirty years after the club was formed by SV Hotchkin and George Peck in 1923. In fact, it’s rather appropriate that East London, Humewood and Durban Country Club should all feature so prominently in our listings as they’ve all played a very important part in the development of golf in South Africa. Remarkably, they’ve hosted a total of sixty national championships between them (twenty-nine SA Opens and thirty-one SA Amateurs) so they’ve collectively formed the foundation of the nation’s golfing traditions since the 1920s. In the bottom half of the Top 100, a handful of courses make double digit leaps up the table: Pretoria (up fifteen to 54) was upgraded by Gary Player in 2004, Victoria (up nineeen to 65) had its greens rebuilt by Golf Data a decade ago, Mount Edgecombe (No.1) (up eighteen to 69) is an early 1990s redesign from Hugh Baiocchi, Dainfern (up twenty-seven to 71) was co-designed by Gary Player and Phil Jacobs in 1991 and San Lameer (up twenty to 77) is an early 1990s offering from the country’s most prolific modern architect, Peter Matkovich. There are six new entries in our latest chart, the highest two of which appear in the top third of our national table. At number 29, we have the golf course at Steyn City, and this Jack Nicklaus-designed layout, which only opened last year, is the centrepiece of a massive residential development to the north of Johannesburg. At number 33, the new course at Highland Gate Golf & Trout Estate also makes a noteworthy debut in the South African Top 100. Nestled in the Steenkampsberg mountain range near Dullstroom, it’s the latest layout to come from the bourgeoning design portfolio of Ernie Els. Rank/ We always welcome your thoughts when we carry out our national re-rankings so feel free to let us know what you think if you have a strong opinion about our updated South African chart. Which courses have we missed out on or perhaps we’ve included one that really doesn’t deserve to be featured? Maybe there’s one sitting too high in the listings or one lying too low? Whatever you’re thinking, please click the “Respond to this article” link at the top or at the bottom of this page if you’d like to get in touch with us. Click the link to see full details of our 2016 Top 100 Golf Courses in South Africa Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses