Bushman Sands Golf Course

Overview: Bushman Sands brings golf into the dry, open landscape around Alicedale in the Eastern Cape. The Gary Player-designed 18-hole course follows the banks of the Bushman’s River and uses the surrounding bushveld to create a very different rhythm from a manicured city parkland course. Fairways and greens offer a clear playing line, but the river corridors, natural vegetation and broad skies make position important. Published tee cards vary, so the course can feel quite different from the forward tees to the back markers.

History: Bushman Sands was developed in the early 2000s as a golf-lodge destination in the greater Addo region, with the course forming the centre of the resort concept. Regional tourism material records the development as an 18-hole Gary Player design built beside the Bushman’s River. The course’s identity has remained linked to the wider landscape: it is a place reached for the setting as much as for the score, with a rural route and a quieter pace than the major metropolitan clubs.

Did You Know? An active railway is part of the Bushman Sands experience, running through the surrounding landscape and adding an unmistakable Eastern Cape detail to the round. The course is also associated with both the Bushman’s and New Year’s Rivers, which published course notes identify as influencing play on several holes and giving the layout more water strategy than its remote setting might suggest.