Royal Cape Golf Club is the oldest golf club in the country, founded in 1885. And, although golf wasn’t played at its current location continuously since then, the present site has been in use since 1905.

It hosts the CIRCA Cape Town Open this week, co-sanctioned by the HotelPlanner Tour and the Sunshine Tour.

Royal Cape has hosted 10 South African Opens, including the 1965 edition of the event, which was won by nine-time major champion Gary Player. Ernie Els, Mark McNulty and Trevor Immelman, the HotelPlanner Tour’s first Masters champion, have also triumphed at the historic venue. Tree-lined with narrow fairways, the par-72 championship course at Royal Cape will present a tough challenge this week.

Although the course is surrounded by the encroachment of the city, it is still very much a course built on the sandy base of the Cape Flats, just as it was when it was surrounded by smallholdings rather than modernity. The tree-lined perimeter and adjacent railway line and roads ensure that any housing is not much in evidence, and a natural environment is preserved throughout most of the course.

And being out on the flatlands of the Cape Peninsula, the course is naturally exposed to the prevailing winds of the area, both the south-easter, or ‘Cape Doctor’, and the wetter north-wester. The mature trees may provide some protection from the winds on a bad day, but even on a still morning the course will still test a full range of skills, and present situations which require some imagination instead of simply power or accuracy.

At over 6,100 metres from the tips, and with the wind blowing (as is often the case), this venerable old course has tested the best over its long and distinguished past. And while there might be courses with better views in the Cape Town area, there is a maturity and degree of difficulty at Royal Cape that marks it out from many of the more contemporary courses in the area.

Founding members first played their golf at Wynberg Military Camp and then Rondebosch Common before moving in 1905 to the present location at Ottery.

The original course was set out by JW Stewart, the club’s professional, assisted by several members. Additional land then became available, allowing another member named Dr Charles Murray – who went on to design other courses such as Clovelly, George and Westlake – to redesign the layout in the late 1920s.

A number of architects have had a say in the design of the course down the years, most notably SV Hotchkin who made suggestions in 1929, then Bob Grimsdell who submitted further recommendations in the 1960s. Peter Matkovich and Phil Jacobs also had input during the 1990s, before the greens were rebuilt to USGA standards in 2000.

DID YOU KNOW

• Royal status was conferred on the course in 1910. It was the 36th club in the world to receive the ‘Royal’ designation, and the fifth outside the British Isles, after Montreal (1884), Malta (1888), Melbourne (1895) and Sydney (1897). The other ‘royal’ courses in South Africa to be thus honoured are Royal Port Alfred (1924), Royal Johannesburg (1931) and Royal Durban (1932)
• 60, Sebastian Gros (France), 2025 Cape Town Open second round (28-32, 12 birdies)
• Royal Cape has one of the country’s longest par-fours, the 470-metre third (492 from championship tee), with a sizeable water hazard built into the right half of the fairway in the last 150 metres