George Golf Club is set at the foot of the Outeniqua Mountains, the heart of the Garden Route, and offers spectacular landscapes of the mountains and surrounding plateau.
The course is a beautifully manicured, 72 par, 18-hole course with bent greens. The course rating for men is either 68 (forward – 5542m), 70 (club – 5862m) or 72 (championship – 6162m), while that for the ladies is 72 (5204m).
It was laid out by Charles Murray in the 1930s (he was responsible around that time for a number of good courses, including Royal Cape and Clovelly and, apart from the construction of a dam between the 1st and 18th holes and the installation of a number of bunkers during a 1990s upgrade, the course remains true today to its original design.
George’s attractive parkland course is also one of the most affordable of South Africa’s top rated tracks and it’s a big favourite with tens of thousands of visitors who play almost half the number of available rounds here every year. Despite this traffic, George’s greens are first class and the overall conditioning of the course is amongst the best in the country.
The nines at George are a little lop-sided, with only one par three and one par five on the outward half and three of each on the inward nine. The signature hole is played late in the round at the penultimate, 17th hole, where an elevated tee shot must carry 200 yards across a valley to a raised, offset green in front of the aforementioned dam with a creek up the right and two bunkers on the left.
Verdict : The George Golf Club is one of those courses that can be played again and again, and it grudgingly gives up its secrets to scoring well. No true golfer could ever tire of its charms or the local hospitality, and no matter how well or poorly the player might do, they will surely always want to come back for more.
