Bob Grimsdell left his native England when he was a teenager and travelled to South Africa. He joined the South African armed forces and was subsequently deployed to France during the First World War, holding a commission in the Royal Air Force until 1920. After hostilities ended he moved back to England, married, and became the professional at Chorley Golf Club in Lancashire.
He soon became interested in golf course architecture and struck up a friendship with Harry Colt and C.H. Alison, soaking up as much knowledge as he could from the two masters of design..
“A fine competitive golfer in his youth and a devotee of H.S. Colt, Bob Grimsdell moved to South Africa in the twenties to establish himself in a year-round golf career,” wrote Cornish and Whitten in The Architects of Golf.
Grimsdell and his wife lived in Cape Town and he became attached to the Mowbray Golf Club. Ironically, in the early 1950s, Grimsdell designed the nearby course for the newly formed King David Golf Club. Unfortunately, Grimsdell’s King David course (considered one of his best designs) was recently lost to a non-golfing development, so the Mowbray and King David clubs merged, creating King David Mowbray Golf Club.
“He became pro-greenkeeper at several South African clubs,” continue Cornish and Whitten, “including Royal Johannesburg, whose East course he laid out in 1933. A talented player, Grimsdell won the Orange Free State Open and Match Play Championships as well as the Belgian and German Opens.” Unfortunately, Grimsdell was unable to win at South African national level, twice finishing as runner-up in the South African Open and four-time finalist in the South African Match Play Championship between 1925 and 1932.
Grimsdell remained professionally attached to Royal Johannesburg (now Royal Johannesburg & Kensington Golf Club) for twenty years. After the Second World War he became a full-time golf course architect based in Scottburgh close to the Indian Ocean, south of Durban.
For the next thirty years Grimsdell was South Africa’s foremost golf course architect. He first introduced grass golf courses to the arid bushveld regions in the northeast of the country, Nelspruit Golf Club (now called Mbombela) being one of the earliest examples.
Robert Grimsdell died of natural causes in his adopted homeland in September 1986 at the ripe old age of 89. He was the pioneer of golf course architecture in South Africa and his legacy has been sadly overlooked, although he was recently inducted into the Southern African Golf Hall of Fame.
