EDITOR’S LETTER E Memories of Legend and Hans Merensky
T he Top 100 course rankings have been synonymous with Golf Digest since they were first published in 1998, and they return in this issue for the first time since 2018. If you happen to have retained a copy of the print issue of the March 2018 GDSA, it’s interesting to compare how the rankings have evolved in the past six years. 92 courses have remained in the rankings, which says much for their continuity and the fact that the last new course to be opened in SA was Olivewood in 2016 – it is No 96. There is no queue of new courses knocking on the door to depose those already there, as there were throughout the first decade of the new millennium. One of the eight courses to have exited the rankings was Legend Golf & Safari Resort in Limpopo, which opened to great fanfare in 2008 with an unusual design model where 18 well-known international golfers each “designed” a hole. These celebrities also made regular PR appearances at Legend to play the Extreme 19th, a radical one-off hole which attracted global attention because it required a helicopter ride to the top of a mountain to tee off, aiming for a green some 300 metres away at the foot of the precipitous drop. Another attraction at Legend was an extra 9 replicating famous par 3 holes, an idea
time. Few raters have had the chance to play it. The renovated DCC could almost be classified as a new course such are the breadth of the design changes, and Golf Digest has a policy that newly built courses need to have been open for play for three years before being ranked. In DCC’s case a year should be sufficient for it to be eligible again. Stuart McLean stuart@morecorp.co.za
subsequently copied at Leopard Creek. Sadly, the course and the entire resort closed little more than a decade later. There is always the possibility Legend might rise again. Another once famous Limpopo golf destination, Hans Merensky Country Club in Phalaborwa (see Page 79), has been rehabilitated and re-opened after falling on hard times. It was named after a geologist- cum-prospector who developed what became the largest vermiculite mine in the Phalaborwa area, growing a big town around it. Dear old Hans lived in colonial times, however, and his name has been removed and replaced with one, Ba-Phalaborwa, that doesn’t have much of a ring to it for a course that sits on the boundary fence of the Kruger National Park. Imagine if Leopard Creek had been named Ba-Malelane. These rankings coincide with the recent renovation of Durban Country Club by Golf Data. DCC was No 4 in the 2018 rankings but had slid alarmingly to No 24 in the SA Top 100 website’s rankings following the 2022 floods. Disappointingly for anyone hoping to find out where DCC might rank now, the course has been omitted from this year’s Top 100, as it would have been premature to include it just two months after re-opening. It has also been the preserve of mostly members in that
POWER VIDEO SERIES One advantage of a digital magazine is that we can include links to GD Schools instructional videos. We have been doing this since the first issue. On Page 92 there are links to 3 videos by Michael Breed in his article The Swing Maker where he explains an interesting theory on gaining more distance off the tee.
Back issues of the GDSA digital magazine can be found by registering on the MyGolfLife website.
EDITOR STUART MCLEAN DESIGN ELINORE DE LISLE MEDIA SALES RICHARD ROWE
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