When Jacques Kruyswijk won the 2025 Magical Kenya Open in February, I was reminded of my trip to Nairobi in 1998.
Jacques won at Muthaiga Golf Club, which I’m sure is a lot less formal now than it was quarter of a century ago. Back then, the imposing clubhouse was painted British Empire pink and non-members couldn’t buy a drink.
I had been invited to entertain the rugby-loving patrons of Muthaiga Golf Club, but I was unable to take up their kind offer of 18 holes, having slipped a disc on the morning I arrived.
My host filled me with painkillers and I leaned against a barstool to deliver my speech, unable either to stand or sit without sending my body into spasm.
A few alcoholic looseners in the members bar, together with the painkillers, meant that I literally had no idea what I was talking about (no change there, then).
All these years later my real memory of the club is that women were only allowed in the bar on Christmas Day and the Queen’s birthday.
Oh, and only members could buy drinks and they had to write down their order, which would be impaled on a spike and charged to their account at the end of the month.
As golf clubs around the world are dragged into the 21st century – some kicking and screaming – it’s worth remembering how brutal some clubs could be with rules designed to keep the riffraff out.
Incorrect clothing was a favourite with many, and in the same year I visited Kenya I was turfed off the balcony of a well-known Johannesburg club for having the temerity to wear sandals.
Willie Nelson, who turned 91 recently, once bought a golf course so that he could play when, with whom and wearing whatsoever he wished.
He also got to decide how many blows on any given hole constituted par, and if he did a par 11 in 10, he would celebrate a rare birdie.
Willie’s devil-may-care attitude would have resonated with Kenya’s crop-dusting fraternity.
On a different trip from my 1998 fiasco, I got to play the recently refurbished Karen Country Club. The course was named after and built on land once farmed by Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa and, my personal favourite, Babette’s Feast.
It was here that, once a month, single-seater crop-dusters would swoop from the sky on to the 1st fairway to disgorge the golf-loving farmers of the Great Rift Valley.
They would play 18 holes and then repair to the bar for a night of revelry. Finally, with thirsts quenched, they would climb back into their planes and head home.
It must have been quite a sight, watching them bounce down the fairway and thence unsteadily take to the air, safe in the knowledge that there was no chance of running into a police roadblock at 3,000 feet.
And, as one veteran of the day told me, ‘How else was I going to get home? I was too pissed to walk.’
– This article first appeared in the Autumn 2025 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.
Photo: Luke Walker/Getty Images
Article Link: Andy Capostagno Column: Clubhouse capers