Zimbali Lakes Resort

Overview: Zimbali Lakes is a new North Coast course where Ernie Els and Golf Data have shaped an 18-hole layout around lakes, coastal vegetation and the warm KwaZulu-Natal landscape. The par-72 course measures about 6,019 metres and is designed to feel open and contemporary, with water and broad fairway corridors creating strategic choices rather than a single forced line. Its resort setting places golf within a larger coastal development still taking shape.

History: Zimbali Lakes is the latest chapter in the North Coast’s rapid golf and residential growth. The course was developed as part of the resort and opened to limited play on 16 April 2025, with Ernie Els’ design role giving the project an immediate architectural identity. Because the surrounding resort is still evolving, the course’s early years will form part of its story rather than a finished historical period.

Did You Know? Zimbali Lakes is unusual in being a genuinely new destination course in a region already known for established coastal clubs. The lakes are not only visual features for the resort; they are repeated strategic reference points that help define the new course’s character from hole to hole.