Justin Harding 80/1 © Asian Tour
The European Tour stays in Africa but now moves to South African and the Eastern Cape, to a course that has created much debate as to whether it is a true links course or not.
The course opened for play in December 2006 and was quickly voted the Best New Course in South Africa in 2007 and has consistently been ranked as one of the top 10 golf courses in South Africa. But according to George Peper and Malcolm Campbell authors of the “True Links” bible, which features 246 links golf courses worldwide, St Francis Links isn’t among them.
The course is a Jack Nicklaus signature course and is situated an hour’s drive along the coast from Port Elizabeth. The course lies a little inland from the coast but does display many links like traits, the tees are not artificially elevated above the playing surface and the holes follow the topography, which is laid out on rugged, tumbling, sandy terrain and weaves through the dunes in a design that has no two holes are alike and which are mostly removed entirely from each other.
