Month: January 2021

This week on Thursday a very early tee off, 05h30 at the Royal Durban golf club.

History tells us that in 1892 a golf course was formed on the current site. On the 8th April 1932, the Durban golf club was granted permission to add the ‘prefix’ Royal by his majesty King George V. The other ‘Royal’ courses in South Africa is the oldest course in the country Royal Cape, opened in 1885 and Royal Johannesburg 1890.

There are just 64 golf clubs in the world with the bona fide right to a ‘royal’ title, bestowed by a member of the United Kingdom royal family. Of these 34 are in the UK, 26 throughout the Commonwealth and 4 others (2 in Ireland, 1 in the Czech republic and the other in Germany).

Royal Durban is also one of the few courses, situated within a horse racing track, being Greyville race course, home to South Africa’s favourite July Handicap

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GolfAri’s different venue this week. A visit to probably Durban’s first Municipal golf course, Windsor Park, situated alongside the Umgeni river.

History tells us that in 1849 this was the original site for the Durban Botanical Gardens (crops and vegetables etc) which relocated to its present site in 1851. The reason being, that the staff in those days kept being attacked by hippos and crocodiles. Lucky for us golfers it’s 2021 because we never saw any ‘wildlife’ except for the noisy hadedas. Not much documented history is to be found other than in the early 1930’s the Athlone Golf Club was formed.

Many Durban golfers still refer to it as “Windsor” and from an early or middle age, used this course as their practice ground, before venturing into memberships of local and country private golf courses.

The course is parklike, with trees down the sides of the fairways. If you hit it straight then no real problems, however anything slightly off the mowed surface, the tough kikuyu grass made hunting for the ball an additional “hazard”.