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 John Collier Survey’s data, which is received from golf clubs throughout South Africa, is combined with desktop research and interviews with people knowledgeable about golf courses throughout the region, and then analysed, following which we publish the John Collier Annual Survey in March each year.
In a recently published piece, under CMASA’s ‘White Paper Article Series’, entitled “Are you leading or Catching Up?” by Francois Swart, he wrote that the club landscape is not simply evolving, it is being reshaped.
I recently shared the Old Tom Capital 2026 Golf Industry Outlook with a member of a private club that travels internationally. It’s one of the most data-rich reads on where the golf economy is heading, and for those of us operating with South Africa in mind, the signal is hard to ignore.
As global travellers become more intentional about where and how they spend their time and money, sustainability is no longer a “nice to have.” It has become a deciding factor. And in the world of golf tourism, a powerful shift is underway.
LIV Golf at Steyn City: What the Sustainability ESG Lens Reveals About the Game’s Governance Fault Line
The recent staging of the LIV Golf Invitational at Steyn City in Johannesburg in Gauteng, provided far more than a weekend of high-octane golf entertainment.
We have pleasure in publishing the 19th John Collier Annual Sustainability ESG Survey for South African golf courses. A copy of the Survey may be accessed by clicking on the link https://johncolliergolf.com/jcs-survey-19/ or through the John Collier Golf Website.
At the recent Gauteng Turf Grass Managers Association (TGMA) meeting, the issue of the career and role of the greenkeeper / course superintendent at a golf club was discussed at length.
During the break over December and January, many of the country’s golfers will be visiting different parts of South Africa and may be planning their golf within areas such as the Cape floristic kingdom, with its famous fynbos, or even in the Savannah bushveld area with its famous trees i.e., the baobab, and grasses such as the red thatching grass.
How far has your club progressed in aligning its sustainability ESG reporting with generally accepted reporting standards as is the case in financial reporting through the club’s annual financial statements?
