The best golf courses in South Africa

South Africa isn't a place that springs to mind for many westerners when planning a golf trip, but as a destination for a literal golf safari, it's unrivalled.

Some of South Africa's golf courses are renowned for their unique fusion of golf and nature, including many that quite literally wind their way through safari parks. Dotted all across Africa's southern tip, however, lie some of the continent's best courses, from world-renowned coastal links to rugged inland tracks. 

South African golf is also often astonishingly cheap, with some of the nation's finest courses available to play year-round for well under £100 and making for some of the best golf int he world.

It's no wonder, then that South Africa is home not just to the century-old South African Open DP World Tour event, but its very own stop on the LIV Golf circuit. And with the golf league landing in Steyn City for its African swing this weekend, we thought we'd highlight the nation's finest courses so you can plan your very own golfing adventure.

The best golf courses in South Africa

Durban Country Club

Location: Durban, KwaZulu-Natal

Green fees (weekday): R3,000 (approx. £135)

Durban is widely hailed as the premier golf course on the entire African continent, besting its rivals in both South Africa and Morocco thanks to its stunning coastal setting and routinely pristine condition. It remains the benchmark for golf courses in the nation, having hosted the South African Open 18 times. 

Durban is defined by its sweeping Indian Ocean views, with coastal vistas across almost the entire front nine before it turns inland and other holes that take in dune-bordered valleys and dense tropical vegetation. There's truly no other course in South Africa quite like it.

Visit Durban Country Club

Leopard Creek (Championship Course)

Location: Kruger National Park, Mpumalanga

Green fees (weekday): R8500 (approx. £380)

Perhaps South Africa's most famous course, almost certainly its most Instagrammed and definitely its most expensive, Leopard Creek has become a world golfing landmark thanks to its location on the edge of Kruger national park, opening the course up to a vast array of local wildlife that commonly wanders on to the course. 

Home to the DP World Tour's Alfred Dunhill Championship, not uncommon to play golf here with all manner of iconic African fauna playing spectators, while the course itself is pristine and the on-site accommodation among the most luxurious to be found anywhere in this part of the world.

Visit Leopard Creek

Royal Johannesburg

Location: Johannesburg, Gauteng

Green fees (weekday): R1600

One of four courses in South Africa to carry a prestigious Royal title and easily the finest of the lot, Royal Johannesburg is every bit as upmarket and manicured as you'd imagine, winding its way through pristine parkland like an oasis amidst the bustle of South Africa's largest and most chaotic city. 

The experience here is exactly what you'd expect from a club of its stature, with two tight, neat and long courses (the East Course, home of the Joburg Open, is one of the DP World Tour's longest stops) orbiting a a clubhouse and facilities revered in Johannesburg high society. 

Even so, Royal Joburg is not as exclusive as it appears at first glance. The course is open to visitors year-round and, with a R1600 green fee for unaffiliated visitors on the championship East Course (affiliate club members can get on for just over £50), astonishingly affordable.

Visit Royal Johannesburg

Fancourt (Links & Montagu)

Location: Gwaing River, Western Cape

Green fees (weekday): Links R5,000 (Links, approx. £225), Montagu R2,235 (approx. £100)

Voted South Africa's best golf resort at the World Golf Awards last year, Fancourt is pretty much Africa's answer to a golfing nirvana. This vast estate comprises not two, not three, but four Gary Player-designed courses, spanning pretty much every style of golf you could imagine.

The parkland-style Montagu and Links courses are Fancourt's two crown jewels, the former routinely counted among South Africa's three best courses and described by Player himself as the greatest achievement of his design career.

The Outeniqua, named after the mountains that form its backdrop, is more open, relaxed and undulating, while a fun, linksy nine-holer dubbed "The Links experience.

Visit Fancourt

The Club at Steyn City

Location: Johannesburg, Gauteng

Green fees (weekday): From R1,425 (approx. £65)

Steyn City is one of Johannesburg's most luxurious locales, encompassing a 750 hectare private estate that plays host to some of the city's wealthiest people. Within this enclave lies The Club: a Jack Nicklaus-designed course opened in the 2000s that has blossomed to become one of the country's most celebrated courses, and the host of LIV's yearly South African stop as well as a swathe of Sunshine and DP World Tour Events. 

This testing parkland track is notable for its bunkering, with more than 75 sand traps dotting the course and inland dams providing the ample water hazards that have come to be synonymous with Nicklaus's designs.

Visit Steyn City

Humewood

Location: Gqeberha, Eastern Cape

Green fees (weekday): R750 (approx. £35)

Humewood has an extremely strong sense of its own identity, and is forthright in proclaiming itself as South Africa's only true links course (and one of the world's most challenging) thanks to its relatively open, treeless layout and unique coastal setting just south of Gqeberha (the former Port Elizabeth). 

There's no doubt that Humewood represents the purest distillation of links golf to be found perhaps anywhere in Africa, with firm, fast greens, exposed and windswept outcrops, and rough coastal bush flanking most of its holes, ready to swallow any errant shots. Again, golf here is insanely affordable, with a full 18 for non-reciprocal members just a touch over £30.

Visit Humewood

Gary Player Country Club

Location: Sun City, North West Province

Green fees (weekday): R2250 (approx. £100)

The Sun City development is one of the world's largest resort precincts, and home to the Gary Player Country Club – best known as the host of the Race to Dubai's Nedbank Golf Challenge (formerly the Million Dollar Golf Challenge, one of the first courses to offer a winner-takes-all $1 million prize for the victor). The Gary Player actually plays host to two courses, however its namesake course, designed by the nine-time major winner, is its shining achievement. 

While fairly flat, it's a tight, twisting resort track defined by oddly-shaped greens, ample bunkering and dense foliage that will punish errant shots accordingly. It also has some of the most fun par 5s around, with one even ending with an island green that's gettable in two for long hitters.

Visit Gary Player Country Club

St Francis Links

Location: St Francis Bay, Eastern Cape

Green fees (weekday): £1,190 (approx £60)

One of South Africa's newer courses and named the country's best at the World Golf Awards last year, St Francis Links is yet another Jack Nicklaus design, this time situated in the quiet Eastern Cape town of St Francis Bay (around an hour from Gqeberha).

Golf at St Francis Links is open, coastal and decidedly links-y (hence the name), if a little tighter and more ruggedly bordered than the 'True Links' of Humewood up the coast. Expect few trees to get in your way, but sandy, densely vegetated dunes that will punish careless golf accordingly (and severely).

Visit St Francis Links