other Top 100 course, Umdoni Park. Selborne is charming, a relatively small estate with a hotel attached us- ing the Barker family’s home, an old manor house. A short course (5 925 metres) yet testing – it has regularly hosted Sunshine Tour tournaments – and its best feature is a narrow river valley through which some memorable holes roll and tumble across the land- scape from the par-5 third to the short par-4 eighth. The fifth is a magnificent stroke 1, 362 metres plunging downhill to a green guarded by a dam on the right. Formidable into the wind, as the approach shot will likely be played from a downhill lie. It is followed by a superb pulpit par 3 over the river. Selborne was a highly rated course for many years, in the Top 50 of the Golf Digest rankings until 2010 when it began to careen down the rankings. There were critical reviews of some of its weaker and more eccentric holes. The 18th is a rather short 4 at 264 me- tres, and No 14 alongside it an unusual 318m par 4 with a narrow entrance to the green. It also lost some of its Fancourt-like sparkle, but today is re- turning to previous high standards of conditioning.
able it’s equally popular in summer. For such a remote club, Kambaku has built a growing reputation since Covid as a place to visit, not just because of the golf, but due to its clubhouse which has a deck on a prominent out- look taking in the river and Kruger Na- tional Park on the opposite bank. Just as many visitors have been arriving for lunch with a bottle or two of wine as those keen to tee up. Another newcomer is Huddle Park , an old Bob Grimsdell parkland de- sign at a pay-and-play facility which was restored a decade ago after be- ing abandoned for several years. The entire area around Huddle Park has been gentrified, with the addition of a luxury residential estate and shopping centre. The second nine has some out- standing holes, and shares a boundary fence with the East Course of Royal Johannesburg. Returning to the Top 100 after an absence of four years is Selborne Park , the Denis Barker design on the KZN South Coast which became part of SA’s first golf estate in the 1980s. It’s close to the N2 highway, an hour’s drive south of Durban in the village of Pennington, which is also home to an-
KAMBAKU NO 95 The Komati River flows past the 12th green.
SELBORNE PARK NO 98 The green of the pulpit par-3 sixth hole.
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 75
MAY 2025
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