Prince Albertsporttel: +27 (0)23 5411 366 fax: +27 (0)23 5411 788 e-mail: princealberttourism@intekom.co.za first rugby field experience 'desert golf' Prince Albert offers a golf course, rugby field and tennis courts. We also have a cycling club who arrange social rides. You can go fishing at local dams.
Experience ‘Desert Golf’ at the Prince Albert Golf Club... where the only grass in sight is on the first and ninth tees and in front of the Clubhouse. Fairways are brown (earth and grit), greens are black (sand and oil) and the rough, designated by a border of white painted rocks, consists of stony desert. The horizon seems a million miles away. The Prince Albert Golf Club was founded in 1928 and currently has 24 playing members. The Club Secretary, Das Olivier, who warmly welcomed us to the Clubhouse and insisted on paying for our beers, informed us that lady members were welcome but none had joined since 1952. The visitor's fee is an economic R20. ($3 / £2) There are nine holes, played twice from different tees, and the par is 72 (5,937 m. in length). Players are provided with pieces of astroturf to play off the fairways and presumably they use well-scarred irons for recoveries from the rough. Special "rollers" are used to smooth the "blacks" before putting. An extra hazard appears with the occasional rains in July or August, when the fairways are temporarily carpeted in colourful wild flowers. The Club has a handsome display of trophies and a playing member with the enviable handicap of three. (Ewert van Zyl) One of the greatest golf writers, Henry Longhurst, described with affection his experiences of 'golf without grass' in the Middle East: "In desert golf you have to 'manufacture' shots, as indeed you do on the Old Course at St. Andrews. To cause a ball to carry an expanse of loose sand and grit and pitch on a firm patch with just the right trajectory to come to rest on a small circle of asphalt, is true golf. Harry Vardon would have done it; Jack Nicklaus, I think, would not." No doubt the members of Prince Albert Golf Club would agree with this view. acknowledgements to Stewart Hutton of Scotland, whose article on the Prince Albert Golf Club appeared in the January 2000 FGF magazine (Finnish Golf Finland) In 1886 Prince Albert got its first rugby field. In 1920 a new field was laid out - but it can't have been much fun playing there - it was known as Klippiesvlei because of all the stones. From 1946 the villagers and school played rugby on the school field until the South African Rugby Football Union donated R80 000 to the local club in 1986 to establish the current rugby field and facilities. Visit the Fransie Pienaar Museum to see a gallery of rugby teams from the past.
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