Magalies Park employed a new greenkeeper this year and the course is in excellent condition, as popular and busy as ever. When I visited there were full field back-to-back golf days on Thursday-Friday with shotgun starts. The first one took six hours to complete. It’s an attractive and scenic layout, and the undulating terrain lends itself to a variety of interesting hole designs. Construction of a new green is taking place on the fourth, an easy par 5 at 455 metres where good golfers hit short irons for their seconds. The position of the new green, set to open in December, will make this the most challenging 5 on the layout. It will play 517 from the back, and the green is set in a hollow among trees, with a water hazard being built in front of it. Magalies Park currently has three tee options, but there will be four in future, with yellow back tees for the first time, stretching the course to 6279 metres, up 282 on the present white tees, which will be shortened to 5879. The tees at 17, which some golfers treat as a driveable 4, have been moved back, and will be 358 off yellow. Bunkers, and there are more than 50 of them, are full of stones, and heavy brown sand, but a project is underway to redo them all with the Bunker Armour product. The first to be completed is the greenside bunker on 13, where the new white sand is a prominent feature. The pro shop has been upgraded.
