The Links at Fancourt Hotel & Country Club, South Africa

Fancourt is situated in the heart of the Garden Route, and close to the country’s largest remaining indigenous forest, the Tsitsikamma. The Garden Route is one of South Africa’s most enchanting areas with sheer cliffs plunging into the Indian Ocean, glittering white beaches and the majestic Outeniqua mountains.

Gary Player, who has been a part of the design team since the original courses at Fancourt, came on board to add the Links in 2000 and has gone on to say The Links is perhaps his greatest achievement as a golf-course designer. Player’s design team spent months studying the classic links courses of Scotland and Ireland and then, armed with inspiration from the best that those countries had to offer, embarked on the ambitious task of recreating some of their finest holes to make a genuine links test on what was once an airfield.

The result is awe-inspiring and has elicited praise from some of the world’s finest golfers – The Links was the host venue for the 2003 Presidents Cup, which ended in an historic tie after a dramatic play-off between Tiger Woods and Ernie Els.

In December 2005 The Links hosted the South African Open, the world’s second-oldest national Open Championship and in 2010, the Berenberg Bank Senior Masters.  The Volvo Golf Champions was played at The Links in January 2012.

Make no mistake, The Links has been designed to challenge the very best of golfers and test them in every way and across all conditions. The course has some extraordinary holes and fairways have been, in a South African first, made up of four cool season grasses, namely: Kentucky Blue, Rye, Fescue and Bent, with the greens a dominant Bent.

The Links has some extraordinary holes, like the par-3 second, with its bunker in the heart of the enormous green. Gary Player said, “We included the bunker to break it up, but the front left of the green is severely sloped, so the golfer can use the contours to get the ball near the flag. You will never be stymied by the trap” .