In The News
NEW COURSE Ebotse Golf and Country Estate typifies the new spirit of the East Rand, writes Patrick Bulger
THANKS in large part to the Hollywood fame of its most famous daughter, actress Charlize Theron, Benoni on Gauteng’s East Rand has come to prominence in recent years for all the right reasons. Once regarded as the veritable capital of un-cool, Benoni now likes to count itself as modern and go-ahead.
The economic boom of recent years has also transformed the town and surrounding areas, raising property values and ushering in a period of new-found prosperity. Given urban sprawl and the associated evils of high crime, traffic congestion and haphazard town planning that blight much of urban Gauteng, Benoni has been able to retain a lifestyle that harks back to a simpler, more laid-back era.
Of course, a major part of the economic boom has been the new middle class’s preoccupation with lifestyle and leisure. And Ebotse Golf and Country Estate typifies this dual concern with relaxation and family lifestyle.
When I was first invited to Ebotse’s media open day recently, I imagined a bushveld-style golf course set incongruously in periurban Benoni, yet I could not have been more wrong. Ebotse is in fact a wholly homegrown product.
For example, far from choosing the most visibly appealing piece of land and building a golf course on it, Ebotse’s planners started with a piece of land blighted by years of industrial-era neglect. What is now Ebotse was in fact a huge, overgrown and badly run-down quarry, that served as a cement factory.
From these inauspicious beginnings on the edge of Benoni’s Rynfield Lake, Ebotse has been shaped from thousands of tons of earth, designed by world-renowned designer Peter Matkovich, of Matkovich & Hayes Golf Course Architects.
Matkovich apparently calls Ebotse his “little secret” — and it is not difficult to see why.
Quite simply, the course takes one’s breath away. Forget that it is only a few minutes off the highway, and just minutes from OR Tambo International Airport. Being at Ebotse is about the closest most of us are ever going to get to St Andrews, Scotland. Much of Ebotse is designed as a links course, about seven holes in fact, and the rest resembles the parklands-type course one is more familiar with in Gauteng, and indeed in much of the rest of SA.
Using the many tons of earth available, Matkovich has been able to build a course that boasts substantial elevations. Down the 367m par four first hole, for example, great mounds tower up on either side of the fairway, reaching well above head-height, and giving that wonderful sense of gentle undulation that makes it feel so much like the famous links of Scotland.
So, with a R60m Matkovich-designed course, it is no wonder that the developers have been selling the stands on the complex for R600000 minimum, which adds to a tidy sum, of course, and makes the entire project viable.
Amid this beautiful golf course, much of it designed around water features, is a unique driving range at which golfers whack balls into an expanse of water, with old rowing boats to mark the distances. The balls, which float on the water, are easily retrieved when they drift to the side.
Shaped around the golf course is the estate itself. Schwegmann places a high premium on family life, so it is not surprising that the complex is designed especially for families.
Near the top of the list are the security arrangements at the site, featuring CCTV cameras, a full perimeter fence and walling with electric fencing, inter-home intercoms and roaming guards. Interestingly, the architectural guidelines specifically forbid burglar bars outside windows, an indication of the sort of atmosphere it is hoping to encourage.
In addition to the golf facilities, there is also squash, tennis, nature hikes and watersports. There is also a clubhouse which the developers hope will serve as a central meeting place for residents and their visitors — and not forgetting the players.
The idea is that this will develop into a fully fledged golf club, attracting visitors from around central Gauteng and from further afield.
Of course, Benoni already hosts at least two very well-known and established courses, and Ebotse should help increase its attraction as a golf centre.
Given the condition into which much of our public land has been allowed to fall (just witness the sad state of Huddle Park under the care of Johannesburg), it seems private ownership is increasingly key to preserving what few green spots we have in the concrete jungle that surrounds most of us.
Private ownership and entrepreneurship at Ebotse has resurrected a derelict piece of land and turned it into a object of great pride. With its reasonable pricing, Ebotse offers more for less and could become one of central Gauteng’s favourite courses over time.
It’s mine, already.
Patrick Bulger
click here for link to original article : http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/golfer.aspx?ID=BD4A715245
Below is an article from Larry Gould.
Larry produces the Larry Gould's guides to golf. You can visit his website On-course worldwide by clicking here: http://www.oncourseworldwide.co.za/index.asp
When Peter Matkovich invites you to play golf on his latest golf course design, and he says the guests he has invited are those he deems to love the game ‘as it should be played’, you just know you are in for something very special.
At the end of this very special day, at the prize giving, Andrew Schweggman, one of the principle developers of Ebotse, told the audience that Peter Matkovich, the golf course architect of the Ebotse Golf Course was an artist.
Indeed like an artist with a blank canvas, the golf course architect has to visualise the brush strokes required to fill the canvas with colour and meaning.
At the Ebotse Golf and Country Estate, Matkovich was given a different canvas on which to paint his picture. The site, a former Kaolin quarry, a forgotten land full of Black Wattle and Blue Gum trees, was also a home to vagrants and criminals. Add to this, disused Kaolin dumps threatening to slip into the 40-hectare Rynfield Lake, which is at the heart of an area on the borders of Benoni, it needed the creative vision of an artist to find inspiration to fill this canvas with beauty.
I use the word beauty, as Ebotse, means ‘a beautiful place’ and today; it lives up to the name. Indeed the rehabilitation of this land around the golf course and real estate components, will I believe set a trend for future golf course developments in South Africa. For it is here, you can see the merit of taking a worn out part of the earth due to man’s intervention and revitalising the environment, both physically and economically once again with man’s intervention. This time the intent is with care and consideration to provide a long-term sustainable environment to benefit not only those living there, but also the broader community at large.
However let’s go back to the beginning, for the credit must also go to the courageous developers, who understood that creating a golfing estate on the borders of the famed Rynfield Dam, might prevent further erosion and abuse of this abandoned and potentially dangerous terrain.
The developers were confronted with 800,0000 square metres of alien trees, unsafe kaolin dumps in close proximity to the Dam with risks of a spill. Quad bikes and 4x4’s driving through the wetland in the north of the property was destroying vegetation and wildlife. Illegal fisherman regularly littered and polluted the dam. Dangerous western quarry pit high walls were continually eroding; confirmed by a safety report that this dam wall was unsafe.
Today’s Ebotse is surely a beautiful place. All the alien trees have been removed and replaced with indigenous trees and grasses. All the kaolin dumps have been removed, while new wetlands have been introduced. The quarry pit high-walls have been rehabilitated and the dam wall spillway upgraded to safety levels. The completed golf course now meanders in and around this amphitheatre of reclaimed nature and the 18 holes are truly exceptional brush strokes on this canvas of land only 15 minutes from Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport.
The topography allows for high locations dipping to waterside features and the high grassy mounds lining the fairways create a links-like look and indeed from first visual impact to the lasting impression, the memories are of having played a major flowing challenge with many an outstanding moment to savour. Great par 3’s are certain to gain a reputation among the golfing legends of South Africa, while testing flowing, sweeping, dipping and rising par 4’s and 5’s are the standard throughout the experience. A unique feature, which will no doubt provide the initial 19th hole talking point, is the spectacular one of a kind driving range, where you hit balls into a dam!
The 19th hole is worth a mention, as the modern facilities mirror the standards throughout this 216-hectare development and the personnel and management add quality personal warmth to the visit. I was privileged to play on the day with the inimitable Dave Usendorff, who forgave my standard of golf when I complemented him on his team, as his company Inside Right Club Management is responsible for the management of this club.
This exceptional environment will in the future be home to many, as the real estate component fulfils its potential, as it surely will with its proximity to essential amenities such as shopping, schools, medical services all within easy reach. It will also I predict become a major draw card to the travelling and corporate golfing public, as this venue has the aura of what my father described as ‘class on grass’ and many will find as I did on this very special day, that the experience is added to by the sound of a resurgent birdlife and that on this golf course they will be playing ‘golf as it should be played’.
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