The Top 100 course rankings return to Golf Digest South Africa after a six-year absence from the magazine, and they have evolved both interestingly and provokingly in that time. They now exist permanently on a separate website platform, and have returned to being an annual ranking. The criteria have been reduced to six, eliminating Resistance to Scoring, and the allocation of points for each criteria has been upgraded.
   Some immutable forces still remain in play though, and that is the continued occupation of the top places in the rankings by Leopard Creek and The Links at Fancourt, which are again 1 and 2 respectively this year. Behind them occurs the natural shifting of positions among those courses next in line to the throne.
   The last print issue of Golf Digest to feature the Top 100 was March 2018, and the fortunes since then of several notable courses have changed radically for the worse.
   Beachwood in Durban was No 41 in that ranking, and one of this country’s best seaside designs is sadly a shabby husk of its former self after its sale to developers by Durban Country Club, partially open and waiting for eventual closure. It departed the rankings in 2023. The Legend Golf & Safari resort in Limpopo (No 40 in 2012), home to the popular Extreme 19th Hole experience, shut its doors even before the Covid pandemic came along.
   Sun International’s courses have suffered to a lesser extent post the Covid lockdown. The Gary Player Country Club, No 3 in 2018 and a former No 1, is no longer in the Top 10, while Wild Coast Sun, another former Top 10 occupant (as recently as 2012), and the Lost City Course (No 20 in 2012) have fallen away dramatically without apparently the same investment in their upkeep they had enjoyed earlier.
   Another casualty was Vaal de Grace, the Nick Price design on the Vaal River at Parys, which closed during Covid, as did everyone else, but without being fully maintained. It did re-open later in 2020, yet has failed to return to the Top 100 with limited resources.
   Oubaai, the Ernie Els design with ocean views in the Garden Route, was in financial trouble and struggling to stay open before being rescued at the end of last year by a new owner from Abu Dhabi. However, it now languishes 50 places below where it used to be.
  There have been considerably more winners though than losers. A consequential change in the ranking criteria was the re-allocation of points from what had religiously been followed for 20 years as part of the universal Golf Digest franchise.

FANCOURT MONTAGU

The grandeur of the Garden Route is captured in this view of the par-3 eighth.

Playability and Conditioning, two of the six criteria, now receive 40% of the total mark of 100 points, whereas previously they received just 25%. Shot Values, the criteria which measures risk-andreward aspects of every hole, used to be 25% and is now 15% along with Aesthetics, Design Variety and Memorability. The removal of Resistance to Scoring has most damagingly hurt the Gary Player CC, regarded by many as the toughest challenge in South Africa for both professional and club golfers.
   Resistance to Scoring asked the question: How difficult, while still being fair, is the course for the scratch player from the back tees? We have moved on from there because the back tees are nowseldom used other than in elite tournaments by players whose drives land 100 metres further down the fairway than the rest of the golfing community. And so why should the ranking of courses be a preserve of 1% of golfers whose extreme length off the tee diminishes the essence of the game?
  The back tees at courses in South Africa’s Top 100 are also at vastly different ends of the scale. Having but a few hundred courses, of varying lengths, we are not comparing like with like, compared to, say, a ranking of the 100 best in theUnited States.
   The back tees at Southbroom or Umdoni Park on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast are 1800 metres shorter than those at The Els Club Copperleaf in Gauteng. The back nine at Blair Atholl in Gauteng measures 4035 metres from its black tees. That’s only 960 metres shorter than playing a full 18 from the blue tees at the Wild Coast Sun.

ZIMBALI

The top KZN course in the rankings. This is the par-4 second.

The rankings have rather evolved towards rewarding “kinder” experiences for the average golfer, moving away from courses that were admired for their ability to punish golfers. Playability is a catch-all phrase today in golf, the new mantra, particularly following the introduction in South Africa of the United States Golf Association’s Slope and Course Rating systems which have seen a migration of golfers to a variety of different tees which suit their capabilities.
   This is not to say that the most challenging courses are today at a disadvantage to those with a more forgiving nature. The courses which provide the best tests of golf from tee to green are still at the top of the tree. But providing Playability at the same time by widening fairways, making it easier to find stray balls, and having forward tees that have been thoughtfully considered for every hole, is a maxim which distinguishes our leading courses.
   This philosophy epitomises the modern design thought process. Currently under construction on the KwaZulu- Natal North Coast is the first high-end course to be built in South Africa since The Club at Steyn City a decade ago. This is Zimbali Lakes, a Ernie Els Signature Course, opening in April 2025. Not only is the course on an extremely undulating coastal property, which means significant carries over ravines and wetlands, windy conditions will be prevalent for most months of the year.
  Els and the Golf Data team have prioritised Playability everywhere they can. Wide fairways which camber balls into the middle rather than repel them to the sides; open areas around greens which perform the same kind of relief; and a wide selection of tee boxes to ensure everyone can clear the trouble ahead.

HUMEWOOD

Bunkers and swales guard the green of the short par-4 16th.

The best conditioned courses have benefited from the re-allocation of points. Whereas conditioning was previously measured on a scale of 1 to 10 out of 80, now it’s 1 to 20 out of 100.
   One of the big changes in the SA golfing landscape over the past 30 years has been the improvement in the conditioning standard of greens. They are consistently good throughout the year, not just during the club championships. Bigger budgets are allocated to maintenance practices, and talented greenkeepers can transform the humblest of courses into a mini-Fancourt in terms of the quality of their greens.
   Spoiled golfers have thus come to expect better than average conditioning, and do not tolerate lower standards. Essential hollow-tining practices are seen as annoying disturbances. Gauteng courses often do this work at much the same time in the middle of summer. Yet shrewder clubs will delay theirs by a few weeks so that they will be visited by members of clubs where the greens have been spiked.
   When Royal Johannesburg rebuilt their greens complexes on the West Course in 2022, the course was kept open with temporary greens in place for six months. CEO Chris Bentley admitted that such was the low traffic during that time it would have been better to have closed the course, rather than put up with disruptions.
  When Gowrie Farm in the KZN Midlands lost their greens in the winter of 2023 to a pythium disease, they had to wait until spring to replant them, and  put in temporary greens. Few golfers had any interest in playing the course in that situation and took their custom elsewhere. The greens at Randpark Bushwillow suffered a similar fate in March this year, and the only solution for Randpark was to close the course for more than a month while they waited for the new grass to grow.

Clubs which do experience conditioning issues over a lengthy period of time will suffer most in the Conditioning criteria, because there is now a bigger gap between the haves and have-nots. A course which previously scored 6 out of 10 now might score 11 out of 20, whereas its rivals might have progressed from 7 out of 10 to 15 out of 20, a gap of four points compared to one point before.
   That three-point margin overall can translate to as much as 20 places on the rankings, the points difference being that close between courses.
   This has already been confirmed in the surge up the rankings of three prominent Gauteng courses since 2018 which have benefited from each having outstanding maintenance teams. Pretoria Country Club, Houghton and the Rocklands course at Country Club Johannesburg have gone from outside the Top 50 into the Top 30.
   Steyn City has moved up from No 25 to within reach of the Top 10, and the two courses at Mount Edgecombe Country Club have turned their fortunes around with a greater emphasis in recent years on not only improving the greens, but their overall presentation. Making a course look beautiful and inviting to play with attention to detail is a trick that distinguishes a top greenkeeper from the next level down.
   The Lakes at Mount Edgecombe was outside the Top 100 in 2018, perhaps treated indifferently compared to its older sibling, The Woods, which was No 75 back then. The Lakes could today make a case for being the most improved course in South Africa since the Covid lockdown because it has climbed to as high as No 73. It is only 20 places behind The Woods and catching up fast.
  Knysna is another course which in 2018 existed on the margins of the Top 100. It was loved by its members but only when the club acquired a new manager in Meyer du Toit in 2021, who employed a new greenkeeper in Andre Gerber, was the full potential of this unique layout with its waterways adjoining the Knysna Lagoon realised. 
   It is No 75 in the latest rankings. They have taken it to new heights of excellence and are currently doing something about the rehabilitation of the stunning par-5 ninth hole, which has been swamped by drainage issues for decades and often had to be played as a short 4.

ROYAL JOHANNESBURG EAST

Tall trees frame the par-3 fifth hole, with No 6 top left.

GEORGE

The fairway of the

opening par 4 curves

around the main dam.

There are nevertheless numerous courses which have ascended the rankings on other merits. Their strengths and attractiveness have become recognised with improved re-assessments.
   Woodhill, a Peter Matkovich residential estate design in Pretoria, originally an ugly duckling, rose to its highest ever ranking of No 50 in 2023, receiving high marks for Aesthetics and Playability. It slipped back slightly this year due to conditioning issues.
   Woodhill owes much of its character and beauty to the varying topography of the site, with some significant changes in elevation in places which boosts Design Variety, and the plentiful indigenous trees on the estate which have matured over almost 25 years and play strategic roles. It has both challenging and sensible holes, creative designs, but nothing unusual or outrageously different, which is rare for a Matkovich canvas.
   One course which has changed the perception of golfers to it from earlier years is Eagle Canyon in Gauteng. It began life in 2005 with a great title – the first Eagle term to be used on a SA course – but a Douw van der Merwe course with lots of blind shots and questionable playability. It remains an adventurous course to play, but most of the design oddities have been eliminated, and landscaping programmes have transformed the look of the property.
   Eagle Canyon only broke into the Top 100 in 2016 (at No 100), yet its uniqueness as a layout in Gauteng, amidst a plethora of parkland courses, makes it stand out from the rest, delivering a different experience that has lifted it to No 69. Their “Amen Corner” is known as “The Eagle’s Claw,” holes 10- 13, a quartet of three memorable 4s and a thrilling par 3 involving high tees, water and rocky koppies.
   Atlantic Beach is Cape Town’s equivalent of a course which had its early detractors. It was always going to be tricky convincing golfers to love a windy linksstyle layout with fairways bordered on both sides by impenetrable fynbos, yet here again we have a unique experience which while it might disturb golfers by taking them out of their comfort zones, is an excellent addition to the Top 100 in terms of diversity.
  Atlantic Beach suffered a serious setback to its fairways, basically wiping them out, during Cape Town’s water crisis, yet it has rebounded from a position in the 80s to being in the 50s. 

In the rest of the Western Cape the likes of De Zalze, Hermanus and Royal Cape have risen in the rankings through consistent adherence to quality experiences for members and visitors. Spending money on course infrastructure and renovations where they are needed. Hermanus is an interesting anomaly in that it has 27 holes by Peter Matkovich, and each of the three 9-holers are of equal quality and used every day as three separate courses. Having 27 pays off profitably in the holiday season, when Hermanus is overflowing with visitors. The championship layout, the one ranked at No 40, is known as the East Course, yet its 18 holes are not particularly superior to the other nine. In fact, the best finishing hole of the three nines is the long par 5 on the nine that isn’t part of the East Course. And all are kept to the same level of perfection. A 27-hole facility works perfectly for Hermanus, yet is uncommon. Paarl Golf Club has a similar setup, yet their third nine’s design is a distinct contrast to the main 18, like playing nine holes at Eagle Canyon and then the next nine at Randpark. On quiet days it is even quieter. Serengeti originally had 27 holes, but the Whistling Thorn nine by Jack Nicklaus was reconfigured into an 18-hole Par 3 course.