The Royal Cape Redemption – 2oceansvibe News

(image source:royalcapegolf/facebook)

Royal Cape Golf Club is Africa’s oldest championship golf course, established in 1885. Although it is difficult to celebrate tradition, given the club’s history of exclusion. But like all the best stories, this one ends happily, with emancipation.

Because this club has become the institutional incarnation of the Springboks, and Cape Town’s most effortlessly diverse sports club, provided you can afford the membership fee, of course, and don’t adhere to some overly woke definition of diversity. This is a golf club, after all.

I participated in the Lexus Wednesday Competition at Royal Cape this week. This is a nice collaboration. Because Lexus’s, like Royal Cape, have a luxurious exterior, while inside they have the solid reliability of a Toyota.

The club’s logo embodies the genius of a colonial design machine cunningly designed to market the imperialist lie. Two niblicks intersect in an oval, surrounded by a Royal Blue band with a gold border and a crown above. The words ‘Far’ and ‘Sure’ appear either side of the niblicks and double as the club’s motto. I have never seen anything more ambitious. Unfortunately, my own golf exhibits neither of these characteristics.

I was pleased to read that the royal title was bestowed by a real king like George V, and not by his weakened son, the Nazi-sympathising, abdicated Edward VIII, who, like the equally disappointing Prince Andrew, spent much of his hard life on a golf course.

The putting green is a hive of activity on a Wednesday afternoon. Dr. Reddy and gray-haired, octogenarian mafia members squat over four-footers like herons in a pond. Hopefully they weren’t talking business. Dr. Reddy is a gynecologist. Gary Player completed his thousandth sit-up in the background before manically unleashing a series of roundhouse kicks. Or maybe that was a mirage. I’ve experimented with microdosing, so I can’t be sure.

(image: Royal Cape Golf / Facebook)

The clubhouse looks like a tasteful Bishops Court mansion. A grey slate roof over a wide, pillared veranda is perfect for a post-round gin and tonic or a pint of crisp Windhoek beer. A simple clock is set into the roof to remind members of their punctuality obligations. The veranda backs onto the putting green and first tee, giving drinkers the chance to trash-talk nervous starters being hounded by the starters, Simon or Griffiths. It also gives smokers the opportunity to suffocate themselves in designated areas while the rest of us look on disapprovingly from a safe distance.

The bar and adjoining dining room are tastefully decorated and furnished with plaques and trophy cases. The service from Mark and Nolene is understated and consistently excellent. Sepia photographs of stern ex-members and champions adorn the walls, their uniform waspishness in stark contrast to the current pitch.

Today’s members have the air of authentic people with poise. Victor Frankel would have purred about their tangible purpose in his clipped Eastern European accent. There are the stereotypical doctors and lawyers taking a midweek break from the rigors of professionalism, but they are well mixed with craftsmen, trustafarians and entrepreneurs. Even some who have been apprenticed.

Accountants are rare, and as expected, they prefer the monotony of cycling or padel. The asset managers at Steenberg are spending their share of our pensions. I have never been caught by an unofficial baby boomer here for accidentally wearing my cap in the bar. From the cast of the movie ‘Caddyshack’, the characters played by Rodney Dangerfield and Chevvy Chase would fit in nicely, and I am sure they would find a place for Bill Murray on the greenkeeping staff.

The locker rooms are comfortable without personalized teak lockers, shag carpet, a masseur or a sauna. Jimmy discreetly and meticulously washes golf shoes in his corner office. You don’t hear egomaniacs yelling at each other about stocks or their current NAV in dollars in the showers or creepy showmen walking around unnecessarily naked.

The course is adaptable enough to challenge professionals in five South African Opens, while also being playable by amateurs with a modicum of skill. Golf is best avoided by those unable to hit a barn door with a banjo. Of course, the course’s difficulty is directly correlated to the strength of the ubiquitous southeaster. The greens are consistently excellent and the mountain views are spectacular.

(image: Your Golf Travel)

Royal Cape is the polar opposite of its upstart, constantly remodeled, smug younger sister in Tokai, across the road from Pollsmoor. There’s something about the Stepford Wives perfection of Steenberg’s clipped hedges and dyed hair that makes me suspicious. It stinks of unregulated capitalism. It doesn’t feel like a local club, or a community. And I’d rather not play golf with more sleepers dressed in impossibly tight, white Scandinavian golf trousers. Donald Trump would play here if he lived in Cape Town.

There are many stories about Steenberg. I suspect they are rooted in misplaced jealousy. But if half of them were true, the vibration of all the orgies would have caused Steenberg to collapse.

After golf on Wednesday, a large number of members and their guests sit around long dining tables, full of loyalty, drinking wine sponsored by wineries such as Thelema, Zewenwacht and Hermanuspietersfontein, discussing their games, while waiting for the formalities to be completed. This is the opposite of the institution that refused membership to the Ackermans because of their religious beliefs, forcing them to build their own course in Clovelly. Or the institution that denied membership to its neighbours across the fence on the basis of race.

Like the Springboks after 2017, this feels like the best of us in South Africa, a team that revels in its diversity and uses its differences as strength. Nelson Mandela will come down from his cloud above laughing, relishing the redemption of these prodigal sons.