The Sunshine Tour returns to Parys Golf & Country Estate this week for its third tournament there since 2013, and it’s for the first of the 2025 Vodacom Origins of Golf events.
The previous visits were also for the long-running Vodacom series, and Andrew Curlewis won in 2013, while Garth Mulroy took the title there in 2018.
The club was founded in 1913, with a nine-hole course on Golf Island as it was called. The brand new 18-hole championship golf course was re-opened in March 2007 and has been completely redesigned, bearing no resemblance to the old Parys Golf Club course.
The current layout has a demanding front nine, measured at 3,499 metres off the gold tees. Six and seven are challenging par-fours which played over par when the Sunshine Tour last visited in 2018. The sixth was rated one of the toughest holes that year on tour. The back nine offers more birdie opportunities, with a beautiful run of holes from 12 to 18, several close to the Vaal River. Players are never far from tributaries of the Vaal. That’s because most of the estate is on an island.
The river is more a scenic distraction than a major hazard. It doesn’t come into play too often. However, that sixth is an intimidating long par-four sixth where the green sits on a rocky outcrop with the river flowing around it. And at the par-five ninth the approach shot to the green has to carry a significantly wide expanse of water. The elevated green of the par-five 18th has the river coursing around its right side, and then behind the green.
Golfing legend Cobie Le Grange designed the layout with the late Douw van der Merwe, and it’s a rare out-and-back design which only returns to the clubhouse at the 18th. The halfway house, and four holes (10 to 13) are on the mainland part of the estate.
DID YOU KNOW
- Course record: 62 by Desne van den Bergh in 2016
- The name Parys was derived from a 19th century German surveyor who said the town’s position next to the Vaal River reminded him of Paris on the Seine
- All the greens are raised, a precaution against flooding from the river
