Yellow 5962 metres, CR71.6/121
White 5571 metres, CR69.7/118
Red 4933 metres, CR65.9/112
Women’s white, CR75.2/122
Women’s red, CR71.3/119
R495 affiliated
R795 non-affiliated
Golf cart R410
Winter weekday special R370
Ken Elkin 1964
021 888 4735
www.devonvale.co.za
99 (2023), 100 (2022)
A charming parkland course adjoining vineyards in the Bottelary Valley of the Cape Winelands, 10 kilometres from Stellenbosch, it is good fun to play for the average golfer and holidaymaker. With a variety of accommodation options, it makes for an excellent base for visitors.
Devonvale’s 18 might be on the short side but it’s a well-designed layout with interesting challenges in the form of dogleg holes, tree-lined fairways, water hazards and tricky greens. There’s wildlife on the course, and it’s a most pleasant walk.
Interestingly, in the 1970s this was meant to have become the first golf estate in South Africa. But that development came much later, and even today there is no housing inside the course, but rather clustered around the clubhouse and to the left of the opening hole.
Devonvale was originally a gravel quarry, which explains the unusual topography, and part of Hartenberg wine farm, when the owner Simeon Blumberg, inspired by the golf estates he had seen in the United States, built the course.
The first hole, a short par 4, plays steeply uphill to the highest point of the course, and from there you’re mostly coasting downhill for the rest of the round. The second tee looks down on an enormous dam around which the closing four holes of the front nine are played. The par-4 18th also plays uphill and is one of the most difficult holes to an elevated green bunkered on both sides.
The par 3s are excellent and present quite a challenge, notably the ninth, with its green high above the slope of the dam, while the 16th plays 215 metres from the back tee.
63 by Neville Todd in 2000 Boland Open
Excellent full-size range a short walk from the clubhouse. Teaching professional is Anna Becker-Frankel from Sweden.
2022 Timothy Daniels & Anne-Isabel Scheltema
2021 Wilco Hall & Ashleigh Huysamen
2020 David Barnard & Annie Scheltema (age 13)
2019 Archie Steyn & Athna de Jager-Gaven
David Barnard has won 5 titles dating back to 2007
1/ Devonvale Golf & Wine Estate is a private company and one of the owners for the last 20 years has been well-known yachting personality JJ Provoyeur, who has developed the estate and vastly improved the course. The estate has its own Provoyeur wine label.
2/ English pro Gary Clark scored 60 with 10 birdies and an eagle in a SA Open Qualifier, December 2009. There was placing so it didn’t count as a course record.
3/ Devonvale has hosted a Sunshine Tour event, the 2002 SA Women’s Open, and 2018 SA Women’s Interprovincial. Rhys West and Dewald Smit won the strokeplay and matchplay titles at the 2006 SA Junior Champs. Haydn Porteous won the 2013 Boland Open on 14-under 202 from Zander Lombard. Ryan Dreyer won the 2021 SA Mid-Amateur on 7-under 209.
4/ There’s a special area at the clubhouse where the French game of boules is played.
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