South Africa here we come!

Posted on by Alexander Rose

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Yesterday we booked flights and accommodation for our trip to South Africa later in the year. There are obviously some standard tourist topics on our agenda but golf plays a big part too.

Not less than 5 rounds are penciled in right now, on some of the finest golf courses South Africa has to offer:

I can’t wait for it to happen and to be honest, my knees are already shaking just thinking about all the great hours we will spend on the courses. Everybody seems so positive about South Africa and I’ll definitely check out whether golf has a stake in that opinion as well.

Feel free to recommend another great course that we should play while we are down there. Just comment below, provide name and link and we’ll check it out.

Update: As we will be staying at the Conrad Pezula Resort in Knysna for a couple of days, I’d rather play the attached course at Pezula Golf Club instead of the one by Jack Nicklaus at Simola Golf Club. Both seem to be equally stunning. Also, in George we won’t stay at Fancourt but instead went for the Oubaai Resort, which is home to a cliff-top course by Ernie Els overlooking the Indian Ocean. Pretty similar to Pinnacle Point, so I might play that too. And last but not least, we will integrate the Arabella Western Cape Hotel into our itinerary (or an even better hotel in/near Hermanus), which as you all know feature the Arabella Golf Club, the 3rd best golf course in the whole of South Africa. So all this brings three new courses to the table… guess I have to re-negotiate.

Planning for South Africa in full swing

Posted on by Alexander Rose

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You may or may not know, Golficiency will travel to South Africa later this year. We’ll be heading south again to Africa and this time it’s the Cape region we’re gonna travel to.

The planning and organisation is in full swing but nothing is really fixed yet. Therefore the overall agenda is quite packed, but we’re still trying to figure out how to get all the dots connected.

Obviously on our list is a safari, then traveling along the Garden Route, a bit of hiking, beaching and whale watching at the coast, wining and dining in the Winelands, sightseeing at the Cape Peninsula, chilling in Camps Bay and then finishing and relaxing in the beautiful city of Cape Town.

When you’ve been there already and you know what I’m talking about here, then you are lucky. I’ve never touched ground on South African soil, but I can’t wait to and will definitely read more and more about this great country over the next months.

One of all the great things you can do in South Africa as well is golfing! The British brought their love for the game and it stayed when they left. Plus in this region you have the perfect golf weather all year round. That in combination with numerous first class courses makes this place on earth somewhat special; a golfing heaven.

I talked to quite a number of people already, received a lot of great advice and I’ve read so much about golf in RSA over the last weeks that I’m pretty confident that I came up with a superb list of golf courses which I could play. As I said, the planning is not yet fully done and I have currently no feeling for how many golf days I can manage to squeeze in but if I could, I’d play all of them!

Due to the route we’re taking and to reduce the number of domestic flights, I crossed out two major golf destinations already. One being Sun City and the other one the famous Leopard Creek Country Club, just at the southern tip of the world famous Kruger National Park.

What I came up with is a list of some highly regarded courses and clubs, which I tried to group in sort of the geographical order along the south coast of South Africa (incl. architects):

Knysna

George

Cape Town

So that’s the list of courses which is my basis for further planning. I keep you in the loop once I decide on further steps in the organisation process. As always there might be some changes to the current plan but I have to start with something.

Even Gary Player likes the idea!

I really feel humbled that Gary Player from time to time responds to my tweets. He is one of my heroes, not only for the golf but from a personality standpoint as well and I can’t wait to be in South Africa, walk in his shoes and play golf courses that he had designed. I have a similar strong feeling to Ernie Els and as he’s from RSA as well, I’m sure the trip will be unforgettable.

If you have a personal tip to share, please let me know—via a comment below or the contact site. Thank you.