Annual Golf Weekend Away

Its back at work today after a 5 day getaway to Cape Town for our annual Golfing weekend. We've been doing it for 5 years now, and the event has taken us to Swaziland (where we played at the Royal Swazi Sun), Zinkwazi (Princes Grant), The Drakensburg (Champagne Sports Resort) and Sun City (Gary Player Country Club). This year, we stayed in Mouille Point Cape Town, and were treated to rounds at Erinvale Estate and Clovelly Country Club.

Erinvale is a course situated just outside Stellenbosch, and is your typical housing/golf estate, with magnificent homes overlooking the course, the mountains and the ocean in the background. Its a tight course with plenty of lateral hazards (in the form of houses and water hazards), but it is in supreme condition. The greens were like nothing I've ever played on - with a velvety carpet feel to them. And the weather played its part too - slightly cloudy and cool, but no wind to speak of.

That's where Erinvale and Clovelly differed vastly. We played Erinvale on the Friday, and Clovelly on Sunday, after the most insane winds descended on the Cape on Saturday afternoon. They only lasted for a day and a half, but did some major damage to homes and trees throughout Cape Town and surrounds. On our visit to the Rust en Vrede Wine estate on Monday, they were still chopping through trees that had fallen down over the weekend. Anyway, back to the golf - Clovelly is situated in the valley just behind Fish Hoek, and although it is not a golf estate, it is a golf club with tremendous character and stunning views. However, we were challenged somewhat during our round with the added pressure of having to deal with 65km/h winds funneling through the valley. I've never before considered using a 6 iron for a 100m approach shot, and still left it short by 20 meters. By contrast, with the wind behind us, I think I drove within 10 meters of 3 par 4 greens, and could literally put onto the green for my second shot. I shot a consistent 94 for both rounds, which I was quite happy with I guess, given the added challenges.

As for the rest of the weekend - plenty of cocktails on the Camps Bay stretch, good food in and around the city bowl (with what can only be described as a "legendary" Bo Kaap Lamb Curry on one of the dinner outings), and some sunshine on Clifton's 3rd beach. We managed to sneak in a trip to a couple of wine farms (Alto, Rust en Vrede, Spier and Lanzerac), and invested in a couple of bottles along the way.

In summary, 5 days of good golf, company, food and wine, in a beautiful part of the country. You've got to love the abundance of public holidays in April.