Six years on, criteria changes have impacted its evolution RETURN OF THE GOLF DIGEST RANKINGS
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 eventu- al 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 Co- vid lockdown. The Gary Player Country Club, No 3 in 2018 and a former No 1,
ued 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
he 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 ex- ist 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 contin-
52 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MAY 2024
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