NUMBER 1 The clubhouse and 18th green at Kambaku in Mpumalanga. Previous page: Water guards the green of Kambaku’s newest par 4, which is No 8 & 17.
KAMBAKU IS NEW NO 1 By Stuart McLean
course to give a greater sense of variety between the two nines. Kambaku’s brilliant use of its softly undulating bushveld terrain means it could essentially be described as a 14-hole course, par 72 with five par 5s, five 3s and eight 4s. What qualifies it as a 9-holer though is that you can only field a limited number of golfers at any one time, no more than 60. Only four times on the back nine do you play an identical hole from the front nine. Kambaku has four stand-alone par 3s, only one of which you play twice. That’s the final hole. The most innovative trick is one green being used as a par 4 the first time around, then later a par 3, approached from entirely different angles. Kambaku has seen a surge in its popularity due to its picturesque location on the confluence of the two rivers. The clubhouse deck looks out over the Crocodile towards the park, and good catering attracts a surprising number of non-golfing visitors. Rovos Rail is now taking its passengers to both
in the country. Enclosed within an attractive bushveld forest, it was named after one of the Kruger’s “Magnificent Seven,” elephant bulls with tusks weighing more than 50 kilograms each. Kambaku lived from 1930 to 1985. Perhaps in homage to the old bull, a lone elephant caused a commotion at the club in July last year when it sneaked on to the course during the day, and eventually had to be removed with the assistance of a park ranger helicopter. Anyone who played the original 9 holes opened in the early years of the Millennium, and returned there today, would be astounded at what has happened to the course since. Having the Crocodile River on one boundary, the Komati River on another, and the town bordering the rest, meant Kambaku could never expand. Instead, the club’s leaders and visionaries – notably Harry van Dyk who today oversees the course maintenance – built two additional greens and conjured different ways of routing the existing holes on each loop of the
KAMBAKU IS THE NEW NO 1 Nine-Hole course in South Africa, taking the place
of Bosch Hoek which drops to No 2. The latest annual rankings have expanded from 25 to 40 courses, with 15 newcomers joining all those from last year. Three of the new entries have been fast-tracked into the Top 10 – Noodsberg, Marble Hall and Greytown. Next year there will be a Top 50. Few courses have seen as much building activity and improvements in recent years as Kambaku. This remote club at Komatipoort, bordering both the Kruger National Park and Mozambique, has developed from a basic course built by local farmers into the most innovative hybrid design
60 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator