Royal Cape Golf Club Verified listing

South Africa’s oldest golf club has a championship quality parkland course set against a scenic backdrop of the Cape Peninsula mountains.

Founded in November 1885, Royal Cape is a club that remains steeped in tradition, providing a quality experience on and off the course.

Golf has been played on this Ottery site since 1906 – the club’s first 20 years were spent at Wynberg and Rondebosch Common – although the current routing and design of the tree-lined layout only emerged in 1929 after a rebuild by Charles Murray, club member and foremost turf consultant of his time.

It was the first Cape Town course to host the SA championships (1910), the year in which Royal status was conferred by King George V in commemoration of a visit by Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and a son of Queen Victoria. He was attending the opening of the first Union parliament in Cape Town. It was the 36th club in the world to receive the “Royal” designation, and the fifth outside the British Isles, after Montreal (1884), Malta (1888), Melbourne (1895) and Sydney (1897).

Until 50 years ago Royal Cape was in the countryside, surrounded by small holdings midway between Table Bay and False Bay. Today the course and its surrounds retains an attractive natural look in keeping with the Cape fynbos landscape. Water is used sparingly and firm fairways are the norm in the Cape’s hot dry summers.

Royal Cape’s modern, spacious, contoured and slick greens are a feature of a layout which comprises an interesting mix of holes, all but two running in a north-south direction.

The colonial-style clubhouse is almost 100 years old, built in 1923 (the foundation stone was laid by Prince Arthur while Governor General). It remains a single-storey building which attractively straddles the putting green and the opening tee boxes of each nine.