Previously overlooked by golfers, Kenya—a dramatically beautiful land of big-game safaris and other exotic attractions—has quickly emerged as one of the game’s hottest destinations.
A frequent host of the European Tour’s Magical Kenya Open, Karen Country Club is set near the plantation house once owned by Baroness Karen von Blixen. (Image: Karen Country Club)
(Last updated February 2024.)
Overshadowed by lion safaris and other exotic attractions, Kenya’s golf courses once went almost unnoticed by tourists despite the game’s deep roots in the sun-baked African earth.
That started to change in 2009 when the International Association of Golf Tour Operators voted Kenya the Undiscovered Golf Destination of the Year. And in 2011, Kenya was rated one of the world’s top eight golf destinations at the International Golf Travel Market convention.
Today, visitors mix rounds of golf with safari excursions to the Maasai Mara and other prime wildlife viewing spots on the savannah grasslands of the interior.
Vipingo Ridge Golf Resort offers panoramic views of the Indian Ocean. (Image: Vipingo Ridge Golf Resort)
Both Kenya’s landscape and climate are ideal for golf. Courses are found everywhere from the lush central highlands to the mountain slopes of the Great Rift Valley and on the Indian Ocean coastline. Though the country is situated on the equator, temperatures in the highland areas average around 22 Celsius. Even during the two rainy seasons (April and November), the rain usually falls before 10 a.m. and after 5 p.m.
Golf came to Kenya with the first British settlers, who liked to say that each new town should have a church, a social club and a golf course, although not necessarily in that order.
In 1906, soon after the arrival of the East African Railway, Kenya’s first course, the Nairobi Golf Club (now the Royal Nairobi Golf Club), opened just minutes from the capital city’s bustling downtown. So wild was the countryside in those days that in 1919 a leopard was shot on one of the fairways.
Kenya’s roster of courses now includes 13 18-hole layouts, several of which rank among the finest in Africa. Here, five must-play courses found throughout a golf destination finally getting its due:
- Karen Country Club
A frequent host of the Kenya Open, this lushly beautiful course near Nairobi features fairways that wend through natural woodlands and around pools and wetlands. Nearby is the famous plantation house once owned by Baroness Karen von Blixen, the author of Out of Africa.
- Muthaiga Golf Club
Luminaries such as Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo and Vijay Singh have walked the tree-lined fairways of a venerable Nairobi club that celebrated its centenary in 2013. Another frequent host of the Kenya Open since the tournament’s start in 1967, the course was renovated in 2004 by South African golf architect Peter Malkovich. Muthaiga’s numerous lakes and ponds are a breeding ground for Egyptian Geese, while monkeys love to frolic on the dogleg par-five fifth hole.
- Royal Nairobi Golf Club
Flowering bushes, bougainvillea and a wide variety of tree species lend colour and aesthetic appeal to a meticulously maintained course where the lovely Ngong Hills are in almost constant view.
- Rift Valley Golf Club
The showpiece of the award-winning Great Rift Valley Lodge and Golf Resort is a dramatically contoured and heavily bunkered course that claims to have the most diverse birdlife in Africa. More than 300 species—including pelicans and flamingoes—stop by the five major water features.
- Vipingo Ridge Golf Resort
Opened in 2009 near Mombasa, Vipingo’s Baobab Course is Kenya’s newest headliner—and surely one of Africa’s most ideally situated courses, offering panoramic views of the Indian Ocean to the east and sunsets over the vast African interior to the west. The risk-reward David Jones design meanders around waterfalls, lakes and streams rich in birdlife. Vipingo Ridge hosted the 2022, 2023 and 2024 editions of the Magical Kenya Ladies Open.
