Richmond

Richmond Golf Club sits in one of the most dramatic and overlooked corners of the Karoo, the vast semi-arid plateau that stretches across the interior of the Northern and Eastern Cape. The town of Richmond itself is a quiet Karoo dorp, known for its literary culture — it hosts one of South Africa's celebrated book towns — and for the stark, treeless beauty of the surrounding landscape: flat-topped koppies, wide skies, and an almost surreal stillness that makes concentration on a golf course either very easy or very difficult, depending on your temperament.

Karoo golf tends to be a particular kind of experience — firm, fast ground, thin air at elevation, and wind that can rewrite your game plan by the back nine. Courses in these small interior towns often have a handmade, unhurried quality to them, maintained by small communities who take genuine pride in what they've built on unpromising terrain.

An 18-hole, par-72 layout in a setting this remote carries its own quiet authority. You won't find it in the rankings, but that's rather the point.