Gary Player Golf Courses in South Africa

Published 13 October 2026 ยท Africa Golf and Safari

Ask a group of golfers to name a South African course and two names come back more than any others: Leopard Creek and the Links at Fancourt. Both are Gary Player designs. Mention any serious golf itinerary in South Africa and his name surfaces again within minutes, sometimes as the man who won the tournaments, more often as the man who drew the courses. If you are planning a golf safari, you are very likely going to play his work, and it helps to know what you are walking onto.

This guide covers who Player is, the courses of his that we build trips around, how to get onto them, and how to link several together in a single fortnight without spending the holiday in a car.

Who Was Gary Player

Gary Player was born in Johannesburg in 1935 and turned professional in 1953, at seventeen. He went on to win nine major championships, the Masters three times, the Open Championship three times, the US Open and the PGA Championship in the same year, 1965, and with that US Open he completed the career Grand Slam, the third golfer in history to do so and, at the time, the youngest at 29. He remains the only non American among the group most often named as the five greats of the postwar era, alongside Hogan, Snead, Palmer and Nicklaus.

His playing record alone would fill a long article. He won more than 160 professional tournaments across six continents, and he holds the record for South African Open victories with thirteen, a haul spread over four decades from 1956 to 1981. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. Nicknamed the Black Knight, he was also the first great golfer to treat fitness and travel as seriously as the swing, flying to events that his contemporaries skipped and building a global following as a result.

Since retiring from the main tour he has built a design business with more than 400 projects worldwide, and that is where South Africa comes back into the story. Player's firm has drawn a remarkable share of the country's highest ranked layouts, from Garden Route estates to bushveld resorts on the edge of the Kruger. In Golf Digest's South African course rankings for 2026, five of the top eight courses were Gary Player designs, a concentration of quality that no other architect in the country comes close to matching.

The Links at Fancourt, George

Fancourt sits on the edge of George, in the heart of the Garden Route, and the Links is its showpiece. The land was flat, an old airfield, and turning it into something that played and looked like a genuine links required the movement of millions of cubic metres of earth. The result is rolling dune shaped fairways, deep revetted bunkers and upturned, saucer shaped greens, all set against the Outeniqua Mountains. Player described it as his greatest achievement as a designer, and it has been ranked the number one course in South Africa for most of the two decades since it opened in 2000.

It also has genuine championship proof. The Links hosted the 2003 Presidents Cup, the only time in the event's history that it finished halved, with Ernie Els and Tiger Woods sharing their final singles match in the fading light. It has since hosted the South African Open.

Access is restricted to guests of the Fancourt hotel and members of the estate, which keeps conditions immaculate and means the round needs to be booked as part of a stay rather than as a casual tee time. The rest of the estate is worth your days too: the Montagu, the original course on the property and also a Player design, is parkland golf at its most polished, and the Outeniqua is a gentler, more forgiving round that suits a second day or a mixed ability group. Add two nights at Addo Elephant National Park up the road and you have the bones of a Garden Route week. Our Garden Route golf guide covers the wider region in detail.

Leopard Creek, Malelane

Leopard Creek is the course that people fly across the world for. Gary Player drew it in 1996 on the banks of the Crocodile River, along the southern boundary of the Kruger National Park, and the setting does things to a round of golf that no other venue in Africa can match. Elephants move through the treeline on the far bank. Hippos surface in the river. Crocodiles bask on the sandbanks. The par five 13th follows the water for its full length, with the Kruger bush beyond, and it is one of the most photographed holes on the continent.

The golf holds up without the wildlife. The course is long, the greens are fast, and the closing stretch demands real shotmaking. It hosts the Alfred Dunhill Championship each December, a co sanctioned event on the Sunshine and DP World Tours, so the layout is in tournament condition through the winter season.

Leopard Creek is a private club. Tee times are held for members and a short list of approved lodges, and visitors get on through those lodges or through specialist operators like ourselves, booked months ahead for the dry season. Pair it with two or three nights in a private reserve in the Sabi Sand, where the leopard sightings are as reliable as anywhere in Africa, and you have the trip that most first time visitors to the Lowveld are really picturing. Our safari page covers the reserves in this region.

Sun City: Gary Player Country Club and Lost City

Sun City, two hours north west of Johannesburg on the edge of the Pilanesberg, holds two Player courses and has the highest international profile of any golf resort in the country. The Gary Player Country Club opened in 1979 and has been the home of the Nedbank Golf Challenge since 1981, an event known as Africa's Major, which has been won by most of the era's biggest names. The course itself is a stern test on highveld terrain, strictly walking, with water in play on the closing holes and a atmosphere on tournament week that no other venue in South Africa quite reaches.

Next door, the Lost City course opened in 1993 and is a different proposition entirely. It is desert style golf routed through rock outcrops and bushveld scrub, spread over more than 100 hectares with vast water features, and its par three thirteenth is famous for the pit of live crocodiles that guards the front of the green. It is a resort course with genuine character, and it is the more playable of the two for higher handicappers.

The resort sits beside Pilanesberg National Park, which makes the golf easy to combine with a proper big five safari in a single stop, and it works well as the middle leg of a trip that starts in Johannesburg or Cape Town.

Blair Atholl, Lanseria

Blair Atholl is the newest of the great Player designs, opened in 2007 on the site of his own family farm, where he lived for thirty years and ran the stud that bred his racehorses. The property is a short drive from Lanseria airport, which makes it the most convenient championship course to reach on a departure day.

It is a monster off the back tees, the longest course in South Africa and among the longest in the world, with the largest greens and bunkers in Africa and the Crocodile River winding through the property. It has since taken on championship pedigree of its own, hosting the South African Open in 2022 and 2023. Four or five sets of tees mean that it remains enjoyable from the forward marks, but this is the course on this list that most rewards a low handicap visitor.

In the Cape

Two Player courses work their way into most Cape Town itineraries. The first is the Montagu at Fancourt, covered above, which many visiting golfers rate as the most purely enjoyable round on the Garden Route. The second is Erinvale, in Somerset West about half an hour from Cape Town, laid out beneath the Helderberg mountains and host of the 1996 World Cup of Golf. Erinvale is mature, well conditioned and easy to reach, which makes it a good first round after a long flight, with the Winelands twenty minutes away for the rest of the day.

Building a Gary Player Itinerary

Because his courses are scattered, the trick is to let the route follow the geography rather than ticking courses off a list. A fortnight runs well in this shape:

Three of these venues are private or restricted, and their visitor tee times are genuinely limited in the June to September peak. We hold relationships with the courses and the lodges that control access, which is usually the difference between playing them and reading about them. For the wider logic of combining these rounds with safari, see our guide to combining golf and safari in one trip, or start a conversation on our golf page.

Common Questions

Can I play Leopard Creek without staying at a lodge? Not usually. Access runs through the approved lodges that hold visitor allocations, or through specialist operators. Member bookings take priority, and dry season dates are often taken months ahead.

Which Player course suits a high handicapper? The Outeniqua at Fancourt and the Lost City at Sun City are the most forgiving on this list. Blair Atholl off the back tees is the opposite, one of the sternest tests in the country.

Are the courses walkable? Gary Player Country Club is strictly walking and does not allow carts. The others are played by cart as standard, and Leopard Creek includes one in the visitor rate.

When should we book? For the June to September window, six to nine months ahead for Leopard Creek and the Links at Fancourt, which are the two constraints on any itinerary that includes them. The shoulder months of April, May and September are easier to arrange and often better value in the bush as well as on the course.