Lost City Golf Course

Overview: Lost City Golf Course is Gary Player's 18-hole desert-style course at Sun City in South Africa's North West Province. The par 72 layout runs through undulating bushveld and rocky ground, with broad fairways, lakes and extensive water features changing the character of the holes. Sun International's current material lists six tee options from 5,008 to 6,883 yards, so 6,883 yards is used as the longest published course figure. The design asks for careful management of carries and angles while keeping the surrounding landscape in play as a constant visual reference.

History: Lost City opened in 1993 as one of the two principal golf courses at Sun City. Gary Player's design uses a desert-style vocabulary suited to the resort's bushveld setting, but the course is not simply a dry layout: Sun International records more than 28,000 square metres of water features. The mixture of rocky terrain, water and resort-scale infrastructure gives the course a character distinct from the neighbouring Gary Player Country Club.

Did You Know? The 13th hole contains live crocodiles in its water hazard, and the green is shaped like the African continent. It is an unusually literal piece of course storytelling, but it also changes the hole's strategy because the hazard is both a visual landmark and a real reason to control the line of play. The feature is documented by Sun International rather than being a later travel legend.