INFO BRIEF 142 – John Collier Golf

By Alistair Collier | The Business of Golf Magazine

Dear Club Manager, Director of Golf, Course Superintendent,

For nineteen years, the John Collier Survey has been doing something no other body in South African golf attempts; it asks, club by club, a question the industry doesn’t always want to be asked or have answered: how sustainable are we in real terms as a sport?

The headline number is gold: In 2026 thirty-two clubs achieved gold status up from 30 in 2025, 26 in 2024, and 22 back in 2023 – a steady four year climb, which shows no sign of peaking.

Five clubs earned gold status for the first time, which demonstrates meaningful change, and that the top rungs of the ladder are not always being occupied by the same established names, and while three clubs dropped out of gold, the net movement is unmistakably upward.

The silver level told a similar, albeit lower key, story, wherein fifty-three clubs hold silver status, which is a modest rise from 52 in 2025.

Bronze experienced a small contraction from 137 clubs to 135, which in isolation might look like a step backward, until seen alongside the gold and silver numbers, which show that clubs aren’t dropping out of the system but moving up through it.

Seen in combination, the table’s three-tier shape has moved in a direction the survey has been hoping to see for years; thickening at the top, a gentle widening in the middle, with a thinning at the entry level, as clubs graduate upward.

In terms of the survey data published in March 2026, participation across South Africa’s golf clubs reached just over forty-six percent. This number warrants more credit than it gets, because this is a voluntary survey, with no regulatory requirement compelling a club to open its books, etc., to outside review.

Having nearly half the country’s golf clubs doing exactly that, reflects very positively on how seriously the industry has come to take its environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and governance excellence footprint.

Atlantic Beach sets the bar: If the survey has a face for 2026, it is Atlantic Beach Golf Links, this year’s winner of the Sustainability ESG Top Club Award.

The judging panel pointed to a specific combination of factors: a genuine infrastructure commitment to solar, wetland preservation and smart water management systems that go beyond compliance theatre, and a Vision 2030 framework that ties environmental action to the club’s broader identity, rather than treating it as a side initiative.

What stood out most, was the club’s simultaneous integration of its activities across all three sustainability ESG pillars.

Furthermore, Stellenbosch Golf Club and Arabella Estate both received special mentions for their own sustainability ESG efforts.

Is sustainability ESG gaining ground within South African golf?

The answer to this question is an unequivocal, yes, and sustainability ESG is transitioning from a voluntary “nice-to-have” marketing badge to an absolute operational necessity in South Africa.

The momentum is driven by three distinct factors: The evolution of governance excellence through for example King V (The “G” in ESG), the shift from “Club to Hub” through social responsibility (The “S” in ESG) and hard environmental realities underpinning environmental stewardship (The “E” in ESG)

What one can take away from this: Stepping back from the year-on-year numbers and a clearer picture takes shape.

South African golf is not undergoing a sudden sustainability ESG transformation. It is undergoing something slower and, arguably, more durable: a gradual, compounding shift where clubs that commit to the process tend to keep climbing, and where the leadership cohort at gold level keeps refreshing itself rather than calcifying.

For now, the trajectory is positive, the leadership stories like Atlantic Beach Golf Links are genuinely worth celebrating, and the survey itself remains one of the few honest mirrors South African golf has for measuring how it’s doing on the issues that will define the sport’s next decade. Most importantly, the John Collier research data doesn’t imply failure; it outlines a classic pioneer phase. The gradual migration of clubs into the gold category proves the John Collier methodology works.

The challenge, for the South African golf industry over the next few years is twofold: firstly, to encourage the top 46% of clubs which are already involved to improve on certain of their sustainability ESG metrics, and secondly to help to encourage the remaining 54% of clubs, which are currently sitting on the sidelines, to participate.