• Western Cape Province

• Johannesburg

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WILD COAST SUN Country Club, an hour and a half's drive down the southern freeway from Durban, just across the Umtamvuna River and its suspension bridge, lies this wonderful Robert Trent Jones Jr. golf course, centerpiece of the Wild Coast Sun casino and leisure resort.

Golf here is a treat, a mustn't-miss experience for the uninitiated. Since it opened (in 1983) this course has been a talking point and has become a fixture on the SA professional Tour. hole after hole offers sights and challenges which catch the breath, for we have few venues as beautiful and none more dramatic. Plunging zig-zagging fairways, elevated viewsite tees (one accessed by a funicular rail way). A waterfall-filled chasm and a meandering lagoon arc all part of the recipe.

So too is top notch conditioning; the greens here are probably the best on the Eastern Cape Coast. Best of all , the numerous tees bring the exhilarating challenges within the scope of golfers of all standards.

Good players will immediately identify judgement and shotmaking skills to be at a premium, for not only do the elevation changes make things interesting, but the coastal winds more than keep you on your toes. The course isn't long, but it is full of adventure.

Feature Holes

A curiosity is that the Wild Coast features six par threes, each of them a stunner which accounts for the overall par of 70. Every hole is a feature hole, but the opening par four, which is played from a high tee down to a terrace of fairway and then down again to a green nestling alongside the lagoon, is special. So too is the par-five 16th; from the viewsite tee the fairway doglegs left, segmented by water hazards, till the tiered, water-guarded green is reached.