| South African Golf |
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Got Game?  ACCESS South African Airways (flysaa.com) flies nonstop from New York’s JFK to Johannesburg, with fares from $1,635. OUTFITTER >Uncharted Outposts (Read more... I’d come to Hans Merensky, eager but unarmed, to kick off a ten-day golf swing through South Africa, a country in the complex throes of reinvention. Just as there’s no forgetting the grim tinge of its history, there’s also no denying its present-day appeal. From a sporting standpoint South Africa’s story is especially compelling, since the country’s emergence from global isolation in 1994 has coincided with a homegrown golfing boom. In the wake of apartheid, dozens of new courses have cropped up around the country, many designed by South African golf stars like Gary Player, David Frost, and Ernie Els. From the northernmost border near Zimbabwe to the southern cape where two oceans meet, you can play in a stirring array of vineyards, forests, and seaside bluffs. You can tee it up in suburbs, surrounded by starter castles, or on layouts cut through tin-roof shantytowns. At resorts like Hans Merensky, you can bed down on sheets with a stratospheric thread count, then wake to bang your ball through the sun-baked bush, where a player runs the risk of becoming prey. For the avid golfer, South Africa is, in short, Scotland with sunshine, Pebble Beach with alpha predators and a prettier coast. |
Working as a tracker in
big-cat country, Greg Austin often grunts like a wounded wildebeest
to lure a lion from its hideout. He has withstood the onrush of angry
rhinos and stared down hyenas on moonlit hunts. Wild elephants listen
when he barks out orders. But Austin is a man of limitations. Golf is
a game he has never tamed.| < Prev | Next > |
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