73 - Royal Durban Golf Club

Location: Durban, South Africa

Rating: 6.5

Have you ever played golf inside a horse racing circuit?

Royal Durban is a decent course but maybe could’ve been in better condition. When I played there had been some pretty heavy rain in Durban and the course seems to struggle with drainage. The fairways were quite boggy. We had golf carts and it felt a bit like we were off-roading and had to wipe the mud off our ball after most shots.

The course itself is relatively straight forward, it’s wide enough that you should be fairly comfortable keeping it in play and the rough is pretty short so you’d be hard pressed to lose a ball. Saying that there is a little bit of water around.

I’d say it lacks a bit of variety, large number of the holes are pretty straight. The greens had a really thick grass on it which made the roll of the ball quite bumpy and difficult to read. Because the course is quite open you find the greens are also quite small. Of course there are some holes running parallel to the race track so you can easily leak your ball onto there.

The course does get quite windy because it is so open and with the wind across or into your face it does make quite a few of the holes pretty challenging. A couple of the par 5’s are down wind and can be reached with 2 decent shots.

The club house is a bit old fashioned and has a really nice traditional & community feel. In terms of practice facilities there’s only the putting green, sadly no net or driving range to warm up.