Durban Country Club is among four new entries to the Top 100 for 2025. It was excluded from the 2024 rankings, as at the time it had only recently been re-opened for play following its extensive upgrade in 2023 by Golf Data. A major change to the course is the planting of bent grass on the greens, to replace the Mini-Verde Bermuda.
The other new entries include two newcomers, Kambaku and Huddle Park, while Selborne Park on the KZN South Coast returns for the first time in seven years.
The four courses departing the rankings are Randpark Bushwillow, Schoeman Park, Magalies Park and the 9-hole Bosch Hoek layout.

In 2023, Durban CC was at an all-time low of No 24 in the rankings. Prior to the 2022 Durban floods the course had become tired and dated, neglected, scruffy and a pushover for better golfers. The flooding damaged the course and wrecked infrastructure, and ultimately the natural calamity proved to be its saviour because it couldn’t be left as it was.
DCC has emerged from its upgrade not just a far better layout, with shapely new greens and bent grass surfaces, but also one more Aesthetically pleasing. Stripping away vast swathes of tropical bush to expose dunes and handsome trees, and open long concealed vistas between holes, has been the true reformation of this iconic course. It returns at No 8 and can be expected to rise further up the rankings as the upgrade matures and more Golf Digest raters visit the course to give their evaluations.
Kambaku in Mpumalanga has been pushing in recent years for Top 100 inclusion, and it enters at No 95. Earlier in 2025 it became the new No 1 in Golf Digest’s ranking of the Best Nine-Hole Courses, taking that position from Bosch Hoek, which had been No 1 in 2024.

Situated on the Mozambique border at the confluence of the Crocodile and Komati Rivers, Kambaku was built by local farmers using a design by the late Douw van der Merwe. It has evolved over 20 years from a basic bushveld 9-holer on a smallish property into what could be labelled a “hybrid” layout. Using just 10 greens, the holes have been so creatively routed that the second time round feels unlike the first nine.
A feature of Kambaku is the bushveld forest through which the holes twist and turn, another is the magnificent conditioning, a lush coverage of cynodon grass from tee to green. Winter is the best time to visit, with milder temperatures, yet with golf carts available it’s equally popular in summer.
Huddle Park, coming in at No 96, is an old Bob Grimsdell parkland design at a pay-and-play facility which was restored a decade ago after being abandoned for several years. The entire area around Huddle Park has been gentrified, with the addition of a luxury residential estate and shopping centre. The second nine has some outstanding holes and shares a boundary fence with the East Course of Royal Johannesburg.

Selborne Park, which enters at No 98, is a Denis Barker design on the KZN South Coast which became part of SA’s first golf estate in the 1980s. It’s close to the N2 highway, an hour’s drive south of Durban in the village of Pennington, which is also home to another Top 100 course, Umdoni Park. Selborne is charming, a relatively small estate with a hotel attached using the Barker family’s home, an old manor house. A short course (5 925 metres) yet testing – it has regularly hosted Sunshine Tour tournaments – and its best feature is a narrow river valley through which some memorable holes roll and tumble across the landscape from the par-5 third to the short par-4 eighth.
Selborne was a highly rated course for many years, in the Top 50 of the Golf Digest rankings until 2010 when it began to careen down the rankings.
HISTORY OF NEW ENTRIES SINCE 2021
Coming In
2025 Durban CC (Return after upgrade),
Huddle Park, Kambaku, Selborne Park
2024 Jackal Creek, Magalies Park, Parys, Port Elizabeth, Schoeman Park
2023 Emfuleni, Katberg, Orkney
2022 Devonvale, Waterkloof
2021 Knysna, Leopard Creek (Return after upgrade), Olivewood,
The Lakes at Mount Edgecombe, Worcester
Going out
2025 Bosch Hoek, Magalies Park, Randpark Bushwillow, Schoeman Park
2024 Benoni CC, Devonvale, Orkney, Worcester
2023 Beachwood, Parys, Silver Lakes
2022 Koro Creek, State Mines
2021 Durbanville, Katberg, Legend, Selborne Park, Vaal de Grace