First things first…flight from LAX to Melbourne was not 18 hours…more like 15 hours and 20 minutes. Sorry about the error in closing out post #164. Importantly the flight went smoothly and the golf in Melbourne went well. We arrived February 8th and I was able to play all 8 of the courses on our schedule. We had great weather with highs most days in the mid 70’s (F); I seem to recall experiencing lots of days the 90’s and 100’s on prior visits and those temps were not missed by either of us. I now stand at a total of 28 courses play in AUS and have a list of about six others I would love to get to…but I also understand that if I played those 6…there would be another 6 that would represent a new “need to play” list. Such is the thought process of a confirmed addict! As they say…one cannot fix a problem without first recognizing the problem!
Given some of the weather events near us…we were extremely fortunate. By some piece of good luck I had scheduled the trip Australia first followed by New Zealand…if I had done the opposite we would have been caught by the monster Cyclone which hit NZ’s North Island hard about 7-10 days ago (and decided to hang around for a while).
Once again, we rented an Airbnb apartment in a high rise in the Southbank area just south of Melbourne’s Central Business District. It was close to the City’s great art museums and Pat was able to take advantage of that on the days she did not play golf (I would do the same but never can seem to schedule such days!).
For those of you who have not been to Melbourne, IMO it has the finest collection of great golf courses within say 40 miles of the CBD of any major city in the world. New York beats it when you expand the radius from 40 miles to say 100 miles…but for close in courses Melbourne is the best!
You will of course recall that of the 8 courses I played in Melbourne, three were repeats: Royal Melbourne-West, Kingston Heath, and Victoria. RM-W is currently #7 on GOLF Magazine’s World Top 100 and KH sits at #22. Both are brilliant fun designs that feature wide width, lots of options, and the need to think one’s way around the course; and both play very firm and fast. Victoria is one of the City’s finest clubs and is in nearly perfect condition after a wonderful restoration by Ogilvy, Clayton, Cocking, & Mead (OCCM). The other five were first timers for moi:
—Peninsula-Kingswood GC was formed by the merger of Peninsula GC and Kingswood GC. The 36 holes at Peninsula were renovated into a new pair of courses (North and South) under the direction of OCCM and used a new breed of grass for their greens (“Pure Distinction”) which created fabulous greens. I simply loved the North Course (played 2/10) and liked the South Course (played 2/13).
—Woodlands GC, which has been included on Planet Golf’s World Top 100 since 2020, is a very old course with some design features that are unique for this area (smallish raised greens, tight narrow fairways). Frankly, I do not comprehend how Darius Oliver could include this course on his World Top 100.
—National Golf Club—Gunnamatta, redone by Tom Doak about 4-5 years ago and now really special. This course sits near the southeast corner of the Mornington Peninsula about 75-90 minutes south of Melbourne. This was our last golfing stop in Australia and it proved to be a beauty. We played with two new friends…Vyn and Prue T. who are members and were wonderful hosts. Highlight of the day was playing #11 (a long par 3 designed to be a adaptation of Royal Portrush’s brilliant #16 hole “Calamity Corner"). Here were four folks in their late 70’s and the pars by Prue, Vyn, and moi were “chopped liver” compared to Pat’s birdie (tee shot to about 6-7 feet above the hole followed by a beautiful putt for birdie). Doak must be working on plans to toughen this one up!
—Frankston Golf Club (aka “The Millionaires Club”). I loved this club...9 holes built at least 110 years ago and hardly touched in the ensuing decades. Clubhouse consists of an old wooden structure with a large sitting room (and furniture MUCH older than moi). Total staff…3 greenskeepers. Members often bring their own food for lunch…and a local rule says losers of any match must wash the dishes after the post round drinks/meals! Love it. It is the “anti-Discovery Land Club” and its member roster consists of many of the most powerful and richest people in Melbourne and Australia. Course was in near perfect condition and has greens with extreme slopes…which are very difficult to discern from out in the fairway. These greens are near the leaders of the pack in terms of “greens visited” (Pinehurst #2 is often cited as the true leader of this statistic).
During our last couple of days in Melbourne we watched the reports of the Cyclone hitting New Zealand’s North Island with some horror thinking about the people living in that beautiful country and our trip plans. Somehow, we once again were very fortunate. The area we were heading towards had avoided most of the very serious damage and recovered quickly. The area near Cape Kidnappers was not so fortunate.
I had originally planned to play Titirangi Golf Club upon our arrival in Auckland, but delays in our flight and in securing a rental car meant the round could not be played on Saturday February 19. We stayed Saturday night in Auckland and after breakfast on Sunday headed north to Te Arai, a drive of about 1 hour 30 minutes. Interestingly, there was very little damage to infrastructure that was apparent during that drive. However, based on drives to Auckland and back over the next 3 days, it became clear that the days immediately following the cyclone were spent dealing with life threatening problems and assessing the damage throughout the North Island so that a clear plan for clean-up could get implemented quickly.
Te Aria lost its power for three days but had recovered completely (including internet-based communications) by the time we arrived on Sunday….and property damage there did not look serious. Clean-up was well underway. After a hectic but outstanding visit to Melbourne, Sunday was a welcome period of rest for us.
Late Monday morning Feb 20, we teed off on the Coore/Crenshaw South Course at Te Arai. This is a incredibly stunning golf course which stretches alongside the Pacific Ocean for a total of 8 holes: #6–9 on the front, and #15-18 on the back nine. Except for parts of holes 2 & 3, the entire course sits within 575 yards of the Pacific’s waters. The course has lots of width and options abound on every hole. The course has superb land movement but Pat and I were both able to walk it (with caddies) on Sunday and Tuesday…while also walking Tara Iti on Monday. Yes, the legs were pretty sore at the end of these three days but they also are 78 years old.
Interestingly, the greens are pretty wild for C&C. Filled with a lot of "Maxwell Rolls” (if you do not know what that means, you need to travel to Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, where Perry Maxwell generally plied his trade, or Old Town Club in Winston-Salem NC). Aside from the sheer beauty of this track, the architecture is wonderful. Overall, I would place it at either a high “8” or a solid “9” on the “Doak Scale” (explaining that would take my two typing fingers way too long to finish…so go Google it!). One comment I would definitely make is that when we played it the second time on Tuesday Feb 22, I concluded that it was better architecturally than I had thought during our first go-round…and that is a sign of a “budding romance” and not just a “one time fling.”
My favorite hole was #2…a par four that stretches to 444 yards from the elevated tips, goes down off the tee then uphill while bending right around an unfriendly fairway bunker on the right. Green is protected by a mound at the front left corner so a safe tee shot must go left…leaving the conservative driver with a much longer approach and the the need to deal with that mound. The heroic driver gets a clear path to run a shot into the green assuming he avoids the right fairway bunker. Options options options (loaded with both risks and rewards)!
Tuesday morning we were at Tara Iti Golf Club. Pat and I were there in early February 2016 when she played 2.5 rounds and I played 3. Having spent the prior day facing incredible vistas, I decided to focus primarily on the architecture at “TI”, and that architecture is simply brilliant. Better than my memories from 2016. TI has 18 distinct holes, that blend and meld together like the well know “hand and glove”.
On the Doak scale my current thoughts are solid “9” or low “10”. What I found very interesting was that the courses are not similar to one another…they simply complement each other. Doak’s greens at TI tend to be very sloped but without a lot of internal movement…while the greens at TA-South tend to have lots of internal movement (e.g. Maxwell Rolls) and less overall slope. I might even say that Doak’s TI has greens I might expect from Coore-Crenshaw, and C-C’s TA-South has greens I might expect from Doak! In any case I HIGHLY recommend a visit to find out for yourself!
Wednesday afternoon, after our second round at TA-South, I had the unique opportunity to tour Te Arai-North with Jim Rohrstaff of Legacy Partners. North will be TA’s second public course when it opens in October 2023 and has been designed by Tom Doak. It presently is in the “grow in” phase. While North does not have the incredible views on every hole like South, it is naturally bold…and that is a tough but fabulous combination. There are a good number of bold designs and a good number of very natural designs in golf…but very very few naturally bold ones. There is a natural punchbowl green here that will blow you mind…and your score if you are careless…but help your score if you are careful! Hard to tell at this stage and without playing…but this one could very well end up as the best of the three (despite have “only” seven holes with ocean views).
With these three courses all in play nine months from now, this will for sure become of the the game’s truly brilliant centers.
As noted earlier, there is a wonderful old Alistair MacKenzie course in Auckland. NZ which I was determined to play during this short visit. On Tuesday morning I awoke at 4:30 am in order to be off the 8th tee on Titirangi Golf Club at 7:30am and play holes 8-18 before heading back north for my round at Tara Iti. Then with our flight departing Auckland at 1:40pm on Thursday, I repeated the early drive south and was off the first tee at 7:38am and finished up at the 7th green around 8:50am. After a quick shower and change I was off to Auckland’s airport to meet Pat who took a shuttle ride down from Te Aria to the Airport.
All in all a wonderful trip. Starting with El Niguel CC in Orange County, CA (see end of Post #164) a total of 216 golf holes played on some 12 golf courses. This brought me to a total of 14 courses played in New Zealand, and 1532 worldwide.
One final important point…as superb as the golf was throughout the trip…it paled in comparison to the people we were with in both Australia and New Zealand. In particular, I would cite in alphabetical order our primary “hosts” while “Down Under”:
—John and Kay C.—of Melbourne, and Kingston Heath GC, a fellow member of the GOLF Magazine World Top 100 Panel and close friends of our since we first met in Melbourne in 2012;
—Gary and Maureen L.—of Royal Melbourne GC; Gary is a member of the GOLF World 100 Panel happens to be one of the world’s finest golf course photographers; our round on February 19 was our first in person meeting;
—Mark and Ellen L.—good friends from the USA, members of Tara Iti GC, and President of Global Golf Centurions Club.
Thank you all…and thank you to all the others we were with on this glorious venture.
Next Post coming shortly…an update to my Top 100 Spreadsheet.
