Golf Holidays in South Africa: The Complete Planning Guide

South Africa’s golfing pedigree runs deep. The country produced Bobby Locke, then Gary Player, a career Grand Slam winner with 24 PGA Tour titles, then Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and the South African Open dates to 1903, making it one of the oldest national championships in the game. That heritage shows in the courses. The table below covers the headline layouts our best courses guide goes into in more depth.

The standout is The Links at Fancourt in George. Player’s team studied classic Scottish links in detail before shaping the par-73 layout, which stretches to roughly 7,500 yards.

The Links at Fancourt is ranked the number one golf course in the country by Golf Digest South Africa and 38th in the world by Golf Digest US; designer Gary Player has called it his greatest achievement as a course designer.Top 100 Golf Courses

It hosted the 2003 Presidents Cup, which finished 17-17 and was shared after a three-hole play-off between Tiger Woods and Ernie Els could not be settled in the fading light. Pinnacle Point at Mossel Bay offers a very different thrill, with four holes that ask you to carry a shot over the Indian Ocean itself.

Most South Africa golf trips settle into one of three regions, and they suit different tastes. The Western Cape pairs Cape Town and the Winelands; the Garden Route runs east from George along a famously mild coast; and KwaZulu-Natal centres on Durban’s warm subtropical beachfront. The table sets out how they compare.

The Garden Route earns special mention for sheer reliability. With winter lows seldom below 10°C and summer highs rarely above 28°C, it is often cited as having the second-mildest climate in the world after Hawaii, which makes it close to year-round golf country. The Western Cape gives you Table Mountain, vineyards and a denser cluster of championship courses within a short drive. KwaZulu-Natal trades a touch of summer humidity for the warmest winter golf in the country.

There is no single best month for the whole country, because the three golf regions have opposite rainfall patterns. Our best time to play guide breaks this down further, but here is the short version.

Cape Town and the Winelands play best in the warm, dry summer, with daily highs of 28°C in January and 28.4°C in February, the warmest month. Crucially the rain falls in winter here, not summer: February gets only about 8mm and January about 12mm, while May, June and July each bring around 80-85mm. The one honest caveat is wind. December to February can bring the ‘Cape Doctor’, a strong south-easterly that occasionally blows for days and is the main on-course nuisance of the Cape summer.

The Garden Route is the gentlest of the three, with highs peaking at about 26.1°C in February and holding around 20-21°C even in mid-winter. Its rain is spread evenly through the year, so there is no truly dry window, but winter months like June and July are lighter at around 43-45mm.

Durban and KwaZulu-Natal have a humid subtropical climate, the warmest of the golf regions, with daily highs of about 29.2°C in January and 29.6°C in February, never dropping below roughly 24°C even in winter, making it the year-round playable coast.Climates to Travel

Durban’s rain is the mirror image of Cape Town’s, falling in summer, with December to March the wettest at 115-130mm a month and frequent afternoon thunderstorms; winter (June to August) is the driest and clearest, often below 50mm. Across the country, spring (September to November) and autumn (March to May) are the shoulder-season sweet spot for mid-20s temperatures, fewer crowds and easier tee times.

South Africa is a long-haul trip but a straightforward one. We are a ground-only operator, so flights are not part of the package price; they are an optional ATOL-protected add-on where you choose to have us arrange them.

Cape Town is the natural gateway for the Western Cape and Winelands. Direct flights from London Heathrow take around 11 hours 30 minutes non-stop, operated by British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. Johannesburg is the alternative gateway at around 11 hours non-stop, typically used for safari-led trips before connecting onward. For the Garden Route you fly into George, and for KwaZulu-Natal into King Shaka near Durban.

Transfers are short at the golfing end. Cape Town International sits about 20km from the city, roughly 20 minutes off-peak. Fancourt is just 7km from George Airport, a transfer of only around 10 minutes. King Shaka to Umhlanga’s beachfront is around 16-20 minutes by road. Two practical points make the trip easy for UK golfers. South Africa keeps a single time zone all year (UTC+2), so it is just 2 hours ahead in British winter and 1 hour ahead in British summer, and because the journey runs north to south rather than east to west, jet lag is minimal. The currency is the South African rand (ZAR, symbol R).

We match the hotel to the region and the kind of trip. On the Garden Route, Fancourt is the obvious anchor, with all three courses including The Links on the estate and George Airport ten minutes away; African Oceans Manor at Mossel Bay suits a Pinnacle Point-focused stay. In and around Cape Town, Thirty On Grace and The Vineyard Hotel put you in the city for Royal Cape and Steenberg, while The Bay Hotel sits on the seafront at Camps Bay. Harbour House Hotel in Hermanus adds whale-watching country to a Cape itinerary.

In KwaZulu-Natal, Beverly Hills in Umhlanga and The Benjamin Hotel in Durban are within easy reach of Durban Country Club and Zimbali. For the golf-and-safari combination the country is famous for, Gondwana Game Reserve lets you fit a Big Five game drive around your rounds. Refer to our golf and safari guide for how that itinerary fits together. All of these are arranged tailor-made, so the mix of nights and courses is yours to set.

This is a destination that flexes to the group. Serious golfers come for the championship line-up, with Fancourt’s Links and the Nicklaus designs at Pearl Valley, St Francis and Simola among the best in the southern hemisphere. The golf-and-safari angle is the country’s distinctive draw, and an estimated 147,000 golf visitors booked golf-safari hybrid experiences in 2023, so there is real depth to the combination. We cover the tailor-made options for couples, groups, societies and solo golfers in dedicated guides.

Non-golfers are well served too, with the Winelands, Table Mountain, whale-watching off Hermanus and safari all easy to weave in. If you are weighing the long-haul commitment against a shorter trip, our South Africa or Morocco comparison sets out the trade-offs. And the value is real: golf tourists spend on average 120% more per day than ordinary leisure tourists, which tells you something about how seriously this market takes the experience it offers them.