World Class Golf at Sun City in South Africa

The Gary Player and Lost City Golf Courses near Johannesburg

Apr 23, 2009

Sun City has long been associated with top class golf, holding the first Million Dollar Challenge in 1981. Visitors can play both the Gary Player and Lost City courses.

The weakness of the South African Rand makes playing Sun City’s two world class golf courses one of the most cost effective ways of walking in the footsteps of the world’s great golfers. The Lost City course and the Gary Player course are very different in style, but they both offer a challenge to both novice golfers and low handicappers.

Lost City Course

Visitors to the Lost City course arrive at the beautiful clubhouse complex. It is here, framed against the Pilansberg hills, that golfers first come across the Lost City’s signature in a statue of two intertwined Nile crocodiles. Players will become more intimately acquainted with these formidable reptiles during the round.

The Lost City course is described as a desert course. It has many elevated tees requiring a carry across vast waste bunkers to the fairway. Players are allowed to ground their clubs in these bunkers, but it is still recommended to avoid them completely.

The course’s signature hole is the par 3 thirteenth. Unlucky for some, it features one of the most unusual hazards on any hole in the world, a crocodile pit! The pit is home to twenty large Nile crocodiles and should your ball land in the hazard, taking a drop is not only recommended, it is compulsory.

The course incorporates many changes in elevation and has significant distances between holes, so buggies are mandatory, but are included in the cost of the round.

Gary Player Golf and Country Club

The Gary Player Course first came to the world’s attention when the Million Dollar Challenge was inaugurated in 1981. During Apartheid, Sun City was being shunned by the world community and the tournament, the first to offer a prize pool of $1m, was designed to attract world attention.

The 2008 tournament, now sponsored by Nedberg bank, had a prize fund of $4.3m with local hero Trevor Immelman pocketing a cool $1.2m for winning.

At first view, the Gary Player course doesn’t strike the golfer as especially difficult. There are no significant changes in elevation, the rough is light and the fairways appear wide albeit tree-lined.

The course’s challenge lies in its cunning. The Gary Player course has a large number of well placed bunkers which are constantly in play and many holes incorporate water hazards to protect from low scoring. Perhaps the most significant defence are the greens which are irregular in shape and usually have pins placed in protected corners. The greens are also lightning quick, described by one of the local professionals as, ‘like standing on the roof of a car and putting onto the bonnet’.

The most famous hole on the Gary Player course is the ninth. This par 5 gives long hitters, who can put the ball on the right side of the fairway, a chance to go for the green in two shots. Care needs to be taken though because the green is an island set in a beautifully landscaped pond.

Affordable Golf

Please note that the golf carts carry a GPS, therefore no strokesaver book is required.

The copyright of the article World Class Golf at Sun City in South Africa in Golf is owned by Neil Hughes. Permission to republish World Class Golf at Sun City in South Africa in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.