Silver Lakes has asked to be removed from the Top 100 Course rankings. The Peter Matkovich design, part of a large residential estate east of Pretoria, had been ranked No 69 in the 2023 Top 100. The course hosted the 2015 men’s SA Amateur championship. Wilco Nienaber shot 62 there in the 2019 Gauteng North Open.
Club chairman Gideon Pienaar said Silver Lakes “have had our reservations about the criteria of the rankings and subjectively felt that we were not done justice by the (Top 100) website.”
Silver Lakes, opened for play in 1994, was included at No 42 in the inaugural Golf Digest Top 50 in 1998 and has been present in the rankings ever since. Its highest position was No 33 in 2005. It has been outside the Top 50 since 2010.
Silver Lakes is not the first course to request this in the 25-year history of the rankings. The River Club in Sandton, a private members club which regularly featured in the Top 10 of the Golf Digest rankings from 1998 to 2007, asked to be removed after being ranked No 13 in 2012.
Another private club, Millvale, opened some 20 years ago near Koster in the North West Province and owned by Investec, has declined to be ranked in the Top 100.
The decision by Silver Lakes acts as a reprieve for another Gauteng course, Benoni Country Club, which last week had fallen out of the rankings. It returns at No 100, with all the other courses from 100 to 70 each moving up one place.