INTRODUCTION

Playgrounds of Pleasure

If you bought this book expecting a ranking of the top 120 courses to be found in Australia and New Zealand I am sorry to disappoint you but I hope you will read on anyway. This book is not a ranking. It is more a celebration – of the wonderful golfing playgrounds that have been established in all corners of both countries during the past 140 years.

The origins of the game in this part of the world can be tracked directly back to the home of golf, Scotland. Scottish immigrants, as happened in America, brought their clubs with them on the long ocean voyage to ‘the colonies’. Once off the boat, they found areas of the new land reminiscent of home. In Australia the first golf was played on Ratho Estate at Bothwell, north of Hobart, as early as 1822. Across the Tasman Sea, the wandering Scots found ideal links land on the South Island and were staging regular competitions there by the mid-1870s.

The legacy of these golfing pioneers is plain. Today nearly 1800 courses are scattered across both countries: from New Zealand’s Oreti Sands, the southernmost links layout in the world, to the oasis-like fairways of Alice Springs in Australia’s arid heart.

As you will discover over the following pages, this book is a comprehensive guide to playing Australia and New Zealand’s great courses. It sums up what makes them great, tells you how to book a tee time, points you to the best holes you will encounter and offers a few tips on how to play them well. You can also use this book to plan your next golfing holiday: where to stay, what are the local attractions, what other great golf courses happen to be nearby . . .

Private, public access and resort courses all get a look-in. There are also some notable exclusions. In this book you will not read about Melbourne’s Capital Golf Club or the Packer family’s Ellerston course. For the vast majority of golfers, those two courses are nearly impossible to get a game on. The board of Sydney’s exclusive Elanora Country Club asked that their course not be included.

Selecting the layouts that are featured here was a lengthy, difficult process. But there was one underlying criterion: that each course must present a memorable and pleasurable golfing experience to all golfers. After all, that was the design philosophy of Dr Alister MacKenzie, the great course architect. ‘The first purpose of any golf course,’ reckoned MacKenzie, ‘should be to give pleasure, and that to the greatest number of players, without respect to their capabilities.’

Using MacKenzie’s words as our guide, the following 120 courses made the cut. Once you have played one, two or all of them, I am sure you will agree they belong among the 120 Great Golf Courses in Australia and New Zealand.

 

BRENDAN JAMES