How it started

It all started with Brian Felix, who grew up in Lavender Hill on the Cape Flats. Golf is not a sport commonly associated with his community, and there were no clubs, no course and no coach within reach. But from a young age Brian found solace and purpose in the game, and he refused to let his circumstances decide where it would take him.

With no equipment, Brian taught himself the only way he could. He bent pieces of wire into makeshift clubs and used acorns, which he called katokies, as golf balls, practising his swing on the streets and fields of Lavender Hill. It was a long way from a manicured fairway, but it was where a love of the game, and an exceptional talent, began.

Brian grew up to be an exceptionally good golfer. He qualified for the World Amateur Golfers Championship in Turkey, representing South Africa and coming fourth. It was proof that a young man from Lavender Hill could stand alongside the best amateur golfers in the world. He came home with a dream of helping other young people from disadvantaged areas, in the same way he had been given the opportunity to change his life.

Brian made a plan and in 2017 he started the Hillwood Golf Academy, an organisation in which he and his wife Carol are strongly involved, so that other young people from disadvantaged backgrounds could have the opportunities he found through the game.

In 2023 Brian's golf took him further still. He competed in an amateur golf championship and won it. His prize was a trip to the 152nd British Open at Royal Troon in Scotland, which he enjoyed with Carol in 2024. Brian loved every moment of his time in Scotland, the home of golf. Swinging bent wire at acorns in Lavender Hill, he never imagined in his wildest dreams that the game would one day take him there.

Today Brian passes on what golf gave him. He has a team of young golfers who train students at Cape Town's Royal Cape Golf Club, showing the next generation that where you start does not decide where you can go.