Trip report: South Africa 2018 — Leopard Creek, Fancourt, and a group of twelve who had never been to Africa

I have been running this itinerary in some form since 2011. The 2018 edition — twelve golfers from a club in the Home Counties, most of them on their first visit to Africa — is the one I keep coming back to when people ask me why I do what I do.

The structure was seven nights: two nights in Cape Town with a round at Steenberg, then a light day (wine estates, good food, early night), then fly to Hoedspruit for four nights adjacent to Kruger, with Leopard Creek on day five and the Thornybush game reserve as the accommodation.

The Cape Town portion was what people expected. Steenberg is a beautiful course. Table Mountain behind you. Good wine. Comfortable hotels. Two of the group had been to Cape Town on business trips and were comfortable. The other ten were wide-eyed.

Then Leopard Creek happened.

I've played Leopard Creek nine times now. I've taken approximately 200 clients there over the years. I've learned to stop describing it in advance and let the course explain itself. The twelfth time you tell someone there will be crocodiles in the water hazards, it starts to sound like a sales line. It isn't. But it sounds like one.

What I didn't predict on the 2018 trip: an elephant family of seven crossing the boundary wire from Kruger onto the course during the 15th hole. I was in the second group, watching from behind. The lead group — all four of them — stood completely still at the edge of the fairway for four minutes while the family walked within forty metres of them. Nobody spoke. The ranger, who had seen this dozens of times, was watching calmly. Four grown men who had spent the first three days of the trip being fairly loud and competitive were entirely silent.

The round continued. They finished the hole. The organiser, who had seen his share of extraordinary things in fifty years, said to me on the 18th green: 'I've been playing golf since 1974 and I've never had a round like this in my life.'

That is the South Africa circuit. I've tried to explain it many times. I've never fully managed it.