A pair of Sun City guests were driving slowly from the resort's The Palace hotel to a nearby boma for dinner when they saw a stealthy shape slink across the Gary Player golf course.

“Oh look, it’s an impala”, said conference organiser Renée le Roux to her colleague Werner Nieuwoudt.

As they got closer, however, the animal, now pinned in their car headlights, turned out to be not an impala but a full grown leopard.

“We were both gobsmacked,” said Le Roux.

Nieuwoudt, quick off the tee, managed to snap a picture on his phone before the animal slunk off into the night.

With the resort abutting the Pilanesberg National Park, wild animals are no strangers on Sun City's links. Big cat sightings on the course are rare, however.

Sun City staff had previously reported seeing an adult leopard on the outlying edges of the property, but these were mostly false reports, the resort said.

Predator sightings had become even rarer since the resort reduced the number of prey animals such as impala and other buck on the course.

Meanwhile, the resort has issued a big cat booklet to teach staff about the predators that live in the nearby park.

TimesLIVE