Seeing as Dad has fractional ownership in a gorgeous house up on the Pinnacle Point Golf resort in Mossel Bay, I suppose I have had plenty of opportunities to tackle such a great course before – the only problem is, I simply haven’t bothered, because to be quite frank, this golf course is way above my skill level! (After all, I’m little more than a social golfer you know, playing no more than one or two times in a year!)
However, a couple of weekends ago, when Jessica and I joined Mom, Dad, Ryan and Claire for a Lotter Clan weekend away in Mossel Bay, Dad successfully twisted my arm and got me to join him and Ryan for a Saturday 18 hole round on the course – a course which, just as I had suspected, I was horribly unprepared for! :)
In an effort to save itself and pull in the numbers, Pinnacle Point has been forced to drop its exclusive act and in the process lower its playing fees from a somewhat ridiculous R700 in the early days, to just over half of that today. Of course, you are required to play the course with a golf cart, so if you don’t have your own you’ll need to factor that in as well, but nevertheless, it is a decent deal for such a stunning and breathtaking golf course.
An additional thing which they’ve had to open up is the once exclusive club house, meaning that as an ordinary member of public, you can now order food and sit inside the beautiful venue, taking in the breathtaking views as you are forced to take a twenty minute break after completing the 9th.
As I mentioned before, Dad caught me a little unprepared for this one, and on arrival it was noted that I only possessed a measly 5 or so golf balls in my bag, woefully too little as it quickly became apparent that it is quite easy (and normal for a player of my skill level) to lose balls at a rate of 1 to 2 per hole, thanks to the course’s proximity to some nasty fynbos and even more deadly cliff faces!
This meant digging into Dad’s bag for balls, though at the rate at both he and I were smacking balls away, we eventually ended up eating into Ryan’s reserve balls as well!
(Thankfully an early morning walk the next day would reclaim some of these!)
It really is a beautiful course that gets progressively harder thanks to the location, and happily I pulled off some pretty nice shots which I was quite pleased with. We were lucky that there wasn’t really a wind to contend with on the day (not that it stopped me from sending balls out into the sea mind you), and in the end we all enjoyed a fantastic (and lengthy) day out in the sun.
As it ended up, Ryan was the big winner on the day (and deservedly so based on some brilliant shots he managed to pull off), though I’m pretty sure Mom would have liked us to have come home a good couple of hours earlier that what we eventually did (the course was fairly busy) – she’s not used to looking after an energetic little Jessica! :)
Anyway, to check out some pictures I snapped whilst on the course (much to Ryan’s annoyance of course), view the gallery here.