Australia—Melbourne
(Part I)
First some items that I forgot when I finished up New
Zealand.
When Pat and I played Arrowtown, after the round she spotted
an older gentleman (yes even older than her husband) at Arrowtown wearing a
Pinehurst golf shirt. Bill G. is from England, (about 20 miles north of
London) and has been coming to Arrowtown/Queenstown for years during the
northern winter. Simply loves the
Arrowtown golf course and is clearly a lover of charming fun old golf
courses. We, of course, compared notes
and thoughts. In talking about
Pinehurst, he related that he ran into a guy there who was “building a new golf
course”…after a question or two it became clear that it was Dormie and Bob
H. I gave him some input on the course
(very good) and the business/governance model and he immediately indicated that
he suspected that was the case.
When we flew from Queenstown to Melbourne, we flew Jetstar,
a low cost subsidiary of Qantas. Due to
my poor planning, we got “Jetstarred”
(e.g. ripped off) by Jetstar…and any of you planning a trip here need to
be careful about this…I was not.
Like many low cost airlines, Jetstar has a relatively low
baggage allowance (in terms of weight).
I have no problem with that.
However, they also have a requirement that you declare your approximate
baggage weight more that 2 hours before boarding…or you lose your “no charge”
baggage allowance…and pay per kilo for every ounce of your checked
baggage. And this fact is hidden in fine
print (requiring hitting links to at least levels of other websites) on the
email receipt for your ticket. So, we
having not registered for our checked luggage were charged about US$1080 for
luggage on a pair of tickets that cost about US$510. I have no problem with airlines charging high
fees…what I do have a problem with is when they clearly hide the terms of the
fees in fine print in order to “get you”
(we were not the only ones “caught” by this trap at Queenstown). Just a warning if you are flying Jetstar.
Other than that the flight was uneventful. We got through Melbourne’s airport and into
the city fairly quickly. For the first
time we rented an apartment form AirBnB (basically, AirBnB is to Uber as
homes/apartments are to cars. We found a
gorgeous two bedroom overlooking Melbourne (on the 25th floor of a
very modern apartment house in a “hot” area of Melbourne about a 15 minute walk from the central business district) for much less than we would have paid
for a hotel room. This really works well
for longer stays…and given we were to be here for 8 nights, it proved to be a
fabulous arrangement and deal (no…it does not offset Jetstar). We arrived at the apartment and met our new
“landlords” for the next 8 days…really nice folks…and the apartment is fabulous.
The evening of February 18 we had dinner with old friends
from Boston…Robert and Kristen Wickham.
I met Robert about 20 years ago as we were both very active in MIT
alumni activities and he was living in Boston (attending Harvard B
School). Kristen is an Aussie whom
Robert met while working in Australia.
They moved back to Melbourne from Boston with their two kids about 4-5
years ago, first with Oracle and now with Salesforce.com. Robert is a squash player who has picked up
golf in the past 20 years, and his game has steadily improved (when he has had
time to practice). Dinner was a
wonderful catch up…and Robert was joining us for golf the next day.
Huntingdale Golf Club, Melbourne, February 19, 2016: To my mind, there is no city in the world
that offers the number of truly world-class golf courses within 25 or 50 miles
of the central city as Melbourne. New
York may come close (and may surpass Melbourne when the radius is expanded to
100 miles), but I think Melbourne is the best.
In terms of World 100’s, 10 courses within 50 miles (as the
crow flies) of Melbourne have been on one of more World 100 lists (versus 9 for
NYC)...and I had played six of these.
One of my missings was Huntingdale GC in the Melbourne Sandbelt. Huntingdale originated in 1894 and moved to
its present location in 1938 on a new course designed by Herbert Allison. It started hosting the Australian Masters in
1979 and has hosted that event 30 times over the past 37 years. Huntingdale appeared on the Golf Magazine
World Top 100 in 1985, 1987, and 1989…with its highest rating being #61 in 1985. It has not appeared in any other World Top
100 followed by yours truly.
Pat and I played with Robert and Ashley H., a member of
Kingston Heath whom I “met” via email two years ago. Ashley was very helpful with my arrangements
at some of the Japanese course on my 2014 round the world trip to complete the
World 100. It was great to meet Ashley
after over two years of email exchanges.
I had “met” Ashley through “Aussie John”, another Kingston Heath member
who Pat and I met on our visit in 2012.
Those of you who have suffered through this blog (and its email
predecessors) may recall that Aussie John surprised me in Ireland by showing up
to join me as I finished the World 100 in 2014 at The European Club. John and his wife Kay were in England then to
tie the knot. Kay is a wonderful woman,
and like Pat, puts up with a somewhat crazy husband. I also joined Aussie John late last summer during his swing thru the midwest and PA (The Golf Club, Oakmont, and Fox Chapel). Due to a screw up by both Aussie John and
American Paul, we had overbooked and had five golfers. Aussie John volunteered to caddy for Pat
(without even knowing if she is a good tipper).
Much appreciated.
We were off the first tee at 7:48, and with the first drive,
it was great to be back in the Sandbelt.
Firm and fast is the rule of the day here (even with a good amount of
rain over the previous 24 hours). The
turf is all fescue, and the bunkers deep and typical of Australia…deep with
firm steep walls (plugged lies are few and far between…and bunker maintenance
is easy). Huntingdale has large greens
with strong slopes and many interesting pin positions. Somehow, my short game reappeared after going
in hiding for the past 6-9 months. I
also was on fire with my 3 –wood and 3-utility (which were tired after lots of
use as we played from about 6600 yards).
Had a 79 and was very pleased with my game. Overall, I liked the course…it is very very
good, but not World 100 today. The
bunkers are tough but the sand very firm and easy to play out of, and the
position of the bunkers is wonderful (typical of Allison). Best holes are #4, 7, 11, 12, and 17 (sorry
no pics).
Having played Huntingdale, which left me with 11 courses to
complete the World 100 Ever bucket list, only two (Commonwealth and Ellerston,
both in Australia) to complete the Golf Magazine World Top100 EVER bucket list,
and just Commonwealth to complete GM 1979-2013.
National Golf Club (Old and Moonah courses) February 21,
2016: After a wonderful day relaxing
and playing tourists on Saturday (walking city parks, visiting Australian War
Memorial, and joining Aussie John and Kay and their friends for a dinner at
their house), Sunday was to be a long one.
Left the apartment before 6am and drove with Aussie John south on the
Mornington Peninsula to National Golf Club, just north of the Southern
Ocean. Drive to National was about 65
miles each way. We played with an old
friend of Aussie John (and great guy), Robert T. Played Old Course first. Designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. some 30
years ago, it is built on the land originally purchased by the club, on high
bluffs overlooking the beach and Southern Ocean. The views are simply spectacular, but IMHO,
the golf is amazing…but strictly goofy. Pat did not want to play 36 and there is little to do around it, so she stayed in Melbourne...which means she missed the Wallaby. Last time she saw one was at Barnbougle four years ago...and then it appeared on the dinner menu that night!!
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| View of the beach and Southern Ocean from National Old |
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| Pat's pet Wallaby |
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| On menu tonight?? |
The holes are very very hilly, with long walks (thankfully we took
carts…the course is almost unwalkable) from green to tee. And the greens are multi-tiered and should
have come with installed escalators (some of the fairways should have had
installed elevators). We are talking
about height differences of 6’ at least between tiers. Perhaps this course should have been named
National Golf Club—Otis Course. It does
have a few very good holes…specifically #7 which plays 153 yards from the tips
and 111 from the shortest tees…at very very different angles…with the Ocean in
the distance behind the green
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| Natl Old #7 from back tee |
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| Natl Old from Front Tee---right front go free much more prominent |
Of course, it also has one of the world’s only dogleg par 3’s…the
16th, which on this day had the pin hidden behind the dogleg/mound
(which may be why I was able to hit it to 4’ and make my birdie).
The greens were not in good shape…looked like the members
never repair ball marks.
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| Natl Old par 3 #4--downhill |
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| Natl Old par 5 #5...uphill enough for mountain goats |
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| Natl Old par 4 #15--dogleg right, way way downhill (whatever goes up must come down) |
Jones Jr. calls this track “one of the true tests of golf
and the game anywhere.” I shall not
comment in reply. Outside of its
views…see the beach in the background below…it has little in the way of
redeeming values. It started with a very
poor site selection…way too hilly, and then went downhill (no pun intended)
from there. But then again, the folks at
Golf Digest deemed this one to be the 87th greatest golf course in
the world in their 2016 listing (never been on any other Top 100 list). Maybe I’m crazy, or maybe there just is no
accounting for tastes (or perhaps both).
For those of you who claim I only like the courses where I
play well, or vice versa (Bob K…you know who I mean), I had a 42-39 = 82,
playing from about 5900 yards (plays 6950 yards from the back) in very windy conditions.
After a good lunch, it was over to the Moonah course, which
derives its name from an indigenous tree.
About 10 years after the opening of the National, the club was able to
purchase a farm next door…on relatively flat land (but beautifully rolling
terrain)…large enough for two other courses…the Ocean and the Moonah. A new clubhouse was built to provice one
central starting point, which required a re-routing of the Old (named the Old
at that point) so that it now started at the original 5th hole (with
the original 18th now being the 14th) and then kept the
same hole order…see below:
New Hole # 1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10 11 12 13
14 15 16
17 18
Old Hole # 5 6
7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 1
2 3 4
Confused enough?
The architects selected were Peter Thompson for the Ocean
(and he had first divvies on land selection) and Greg Norman for the
Moonah. We did not see the Ocean but it
has never received much acclaim. The
Moonah, on the other hand, has been on the following World Top 100 lists:
Top100golf courses.co.uk 2011
#87
2012
#90
2014
#99
Planet Golf 2009
#33
2014
#69
2015
#64
I really liked this course and would place it in about the
#90-110 place. It does not have great
views of the ocean and beach, but it does have 18 fine golf holes…and one of
the best set of par 3’s I have seen.
Played
very firm and fast…and the greens were in great shape…few if any unrepaired
ball marks. Wind was strong in the
afternoon…and this was a tough wind…helping on a bunch of short holes and
against on most longer holes. In fact, I
hit approach shots over on three consecutive holes playing downwind. I cannot remember the last time I did
that. Played well…had a 42-38 = 80 from
6200 yards (it is about 7250 from the tips).
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| Natl Moonah par 3 #5 150 yards...first of four great par 3's |
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