The real deal

Robyn, Ed, Marsh and Biv -note the size of her caddie

The Links Course at Fancourt lived up to its reputation as a true golf challenge. It was built as a dramatic links style course (albeit 20 kilometres inland from the ocean!) on a flat piece of land that used to be an airstrip. Gary Player moved an incredible amount of dirt and created an amazing series of windswept, grass-covered dunes. This is a very unforgiving golf course that needs precision off the tee and the right club selection into the demanding greens. The fact that is quite exposed to the wind increases the challenge and not even the great knowledge of our caddies telling us where, how and sometimes what club to hit helped most of us! The golf course is fair and its unique revetted style of bunkering makes it quite fascinating. Here is where the 2003 Presidents Cup was played. It was a special event because the Team Captains were legends of the game, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. The event featured players of the calibre of Tiger Woods, Ernie Els (probably South Africa’s favourite golfer), Phil Mickelson and others.

The caddies always add to the entertainment - some of them have interesting personalities and are good story tellers, some other ones are shy and quiet and some other ones are quite bossy! Overall, they do know these courses better than any of us so their advice is usually accurate and well received. It is just a matter of doing what they say!

Today we saw a new winner for whom her caddie became –according to her own words – ‘the second love of her life’! For Helen O’Reilly her caddie was the extra help she needed and he helped her navigate the course without getting into too much trouble. She won the individual with 40 points. Congratulation Helen! Her strong performance wasn’t enough to help her team though! The winning team came from a good combination of players with a total of 95 points – they were: Ed, Marshall, Biv and Robyn.

After golf we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and a casual dinner. As much as we have enjoyed the different courses and the tour itself, the ‘good old’ bodies are starting to show signs of tiredness so a good night’s sleep was very welcome.

Gary Player's version of Hell Bunker