Golf Autralia Rankings 2020

[Anthony Butler]

I haven't played Lost Farm or Cape Wickham as yet, but any ranking that has Kingston Heath outside the top 5 and NSW outside the Top 10 has zero credibility.

I don’t think you’ve been in Australia since Peninsula North got a total rebuild, so it’s actually three of the top five you’ve not seen.


I think if you look in the mirror you’ll see something with zero credibility!


As far as NSW, it’s the reality of where our golf course is at. With everything that was built or renovated over the 15 years that Norman was making our course less good, the slide is really no surprise. Not when Golf Australia Mag is a ranking of the architecture alone. There’s still not a better place to play golf in Australia, all things considered.


The good news is that the club has now engaged the right person to fix that. Now we just need to empower him with sufficient scope.

I didn’t say anything about PK North... because it’s not fair to comment on a course I haven’t played or at least walked... even though I have played at Peninsula, just not since the course was redesigned.


I will say that based on the elevated ratings of both PK North and National Ocean Course  since their redesign, I would not be surprised if NSWGC is in the World’s Top 25 at the end of the next decade based on the proposals on the table.

[Anthony Butler]

Australians have become a nation of sad, trans-loving snowflakes....
 

Mark-I’m not sure someone from Melbourne should be calling any other Australian a snowflake after your entire city allowed Patrick Reed’s dickhead caddie to jump off a golf cart, assault a member of the Presidents’ Cup gallery, get back on his cart and drive away without suffering any physical consequences. I can say with 100% certainty if that Trump-loving son of a bitch laid a hand on me, in Sydney or elsewhere, the only vehicle he would leave the scene in is an ambulance.

It’s  perfectly understandable, however, given how distracted people in Melbourne can be... half the crowd was using their phone to order skinny white jeans for their office Christmas party, or a flat white and some smashed avocado toast for delivery via Uber Eats.

Next time you complain all those ‘transsexuals’ ruining life in Australia, it might be an opportunity to look in the mirror. If you can’t find a mirror, try that feature on your iPhone every Melbourne metrosexual uses to take a selfie of their new haircut. 🙂

[Anthony Gholz]

Just to get back to Australian golf course rankings for a minute ...


Mike:  Questions from someone who has never been to Australia.  It has one Alison course.  You list 31-70+  including Huntingdale in the middle of that pack.  As an Alison fan, I'd like to hear more about why it's not higher or lower.  Is it a solid Alison routing with good greens?  Or is it in bad condition or is it just not that good?  I understand Alison air mailed this one in, but his green's sketches were very detailed and if he had a decent topo map it couldn't be too bad.


Thanks for your comments.
Anthony

[Tom_Doak]

Just to get back to Australian golf course rankings for a minute ...


Mike:  Questions from someone who has never been to Australia.  It has one Alison course.  You list 31-70+  including Huntingdale in the middle of that pack.  As an Alison fan, I'd like to hear more about why it's not higher or lower.  Is it a solid Alison routing with good greens?  Or is it in bad condition or is it just not that good?  I understand Alison air mailed this one in, but his green's sketches were very detailed and if he had a decent topo map it couldn't be too bad.


Thanks for your comments.
Anthony

Alison's course wasn't bad, though it was always a second-tier Sandbelt course until one of its members decided to invent the Australian Masters tournament and hold it on his home course.


However, the course was thoroughly redesigned 15-20 years ago to "challenge the professionals", and not much of Alison's work remains, especially the greens.

[Anthony Gholz]

Thanks Tom!

[Mike_Clayton]

Just to get back to Australian golf course rankings for a minute ...


Mike:  Questions from someone who has never been to Australia.  It has one Alison course.  You list 31-70+  including Huntingdale in the middle of that pack.  As an Alison fan, I'd like to hear more about why it's not higher or lower.  Is it a solid Alison routing with good greens?  Or is it in bad condition or is it just not that good?  I understand Alison air mailed this one in, but his green's sketches were very detailed and if he had a decent topo map it couldn't be too bad.






Thanks for your comments.
Anthony

In the 1990 Australian Masters Norman shot nineteen under - after almost a decade of quite high scores - and someone determined the course was 'too easy'. It was a par 73 with the 10th a driver mid-iron par 5. They could have filled in a fairway bunker doing little to add interest and made it a par 4. 15 under wouldn't have garnered the same over-reaction. And the par 5, 7th could have been a great long 4 from the women's tee. 11 under by one of the best two or three players in the world at the time (Faldo tied 2nd)  and everyone would have been saying how tough the course was - despite it being 'easier'.

[Anthony Butler]

Just to get back to Australian golf course rankings for a minute ...


Mike:  Questions from someone who has never been to Australia.  It has one Alison course.  You list 31-70+  including Huntingdale in the middle of that pack.  As an Alison fan, I'd like to hear more about why it's not higher or lower.  Is it a solid Alison routing with good greens?  Or is it in bad condition or is it just not that good?  I understand Alison air mailed this one in, but his green's sketches were very detailed and if he had a decent topo map it couldn't be too bad.






Thanks for your comments.
Anthony

In the 1990 Australian Masters Norman shot nineteen under - after almost a decade of quite high scores - and someone determined the course was 'too easy'. It was a par 73 with the 10th a driver mid-iron par 5. They could have filled in a fairway bunker doing little to add interest and made it a par 4. 15 under wouldn't have garnered the same over-reaction. And the par 5, 7th could have been a great long 4 from the women's tee. 11 under by one of the best two or three players in the world at the time (Faldo tied 2nd)  and everyone would have been saying how tough the course was - despite it being 'easier'.

It’s no accident that over half the world’s Top 30 courses rarely or never host a professional tournament.

[Anthony Butler]

I haven't played Lost Farm or Cape Wickham as yet, but any ranking that has Kingston Heath outside the top 5 and NSW outside the Top 10 has zero credibility.

And for sake of argument - let's say the other 98 courses are roughly in the right place (and there aren't many glaring errors) and two courses marginally out from where you think they are then the list has zero credibility?

I agree with that in general, but having played both Karrinyup and Metropoliitan in the last year, I find it hard to justify where Metrooolitan sits in the rankings... or maybe LKCC is simply suffering from the unforgivable character flaw of not being located in the Melbourne Sandbelt


I’m not huge fan of either Moonah Links but you’d have to be on some mind-altering drugs to think Legends is better than the Open course.

[Thomas Dai]

A question if I may.
I’m curious to know why there seem to have been numerous refurbishments/renovations/restorations/redevelopments or whichever ‘r’ word one wants to use in Aussie the last few years?
Is it ball and equipment related? Is it coz the bar has been raised with some new developments on offshore islands? Is it because the usual bigger name suspects have for some reason allowed themselves to slip or made some poor decisions over the last few decades? Is it ego and vanity and keeeping up with the Jones’? Or is it something else?
Also, given general chat and suggestions that the worldwide golf business in general and maybe even the Aus economy itself isn’t in great shape where’s the money coming from to pay for the work?
Arb

[David_Elvins]

Pretty amazing that courses ranked  2 through 31 have all had major work done in the last 40 years but none can overtake Royal Melbourne West which has barely been touched.

[Mike_Clayton]

A question if I may.
I’m curious to know why there seem to have been numerous refurbishments/renovations/restorations/redevelopments or whichever ‘r’ word one wants to use in Aussie the last few years?
Is it ball and equipment related? Is it coz the bar has been raised with some new developments on offshore islands? Is it because the usual bigger name suspects have for some reason allowed themselves to slip or made some poor decisions over the last few decades? Is it ego and vanity and keeeping up with the Jones’? Or is it something else?
Also, given general chat and suggestions that the worldwide golf business in general and maybe even the Aus economy itself isn’t in great shape where’s the money coming from to pay for the work?
Arb

I'm probably best to answer that because we did a lot of them.There were a few different reasons.Royal Queensland was 'the best course I've ever played with a bridge over the top of it" (Corey Pavin)There was a huge bridge spanning the course which you drove under off the 12th and back under again on the 17th. There were 5 holes on the 'other side' of the bridge. Then in 2002 the government announced they were going to build another bridge alongside the original 1980s one which would have made playing the holes on the other side, impossible.They paid for a new course with all 18 holes on the clubhouse side of the bridge. Amazingly there was enough room to make 18 holes without any compromise.
Lake Karrinyup is an Alex Russell course but being far from Melbourne (4 hrs flight) it wasn't as good as his courses on the east coast because there weren't the Morcom's building it for him. It was a decent course (Doak 5 in 1993) but over-treed,holes had altered over the years but not improved and greens weren't in great condition.
Both LK and RQ are the leading courses in their respective cities and hold big tournaments -and LK especially took the chance to add some needed length.

Victoria had an amazing 1930s photo of the course and by 1975 almost all the beauty of the original bunkers had been lost and the tree planting had been poor. We set about restoring it in 1995 and finished it off last year after the club decided they'd replace the mainly poa greens with bent.

Kingston Heath has been at it since 1983 when Graeme Grant took over as superintendent and looked at all the old photos and what had been lost. Like Victoria it was trees (too many and the wrong species) and bunkers filled in which should never have been and once returned transformed the 12th and 15th holes especially.

The Lakes in Sydney lost its original course in 1970 when a freeway went through the middle of the course. Bruce Devlin and Robert Von Hagge did a very good new course - retraining no original holes - but but the mid-2000s it had been so altered by trees and a number of architects that in the words of the President "they just want it fixed" So we rebuilt all the greens and bunkers, removed 100s of trees (taking it back to how the original course was as well as Devlin's version) and reimagined a couple of holes.

The Grange in Adelaide had 36 holes but two average courses if their potential was the measure. We did the West and Norman, the East.

Peninsula had 2 courses in the 1970s. The South was a decent sandbelt (but far from its potential) and the North was possibly the poorest course on a good piece of land in the world It was full of unimaginably poor holes. We redid quite a bit of both in the early 2000s but then another club - Kingswood- was sold for housing and they bought their $100m and merged the two clubs. It allowed us to completely rebuild all 36 holes and these rankings are the first of the fully rebuilt courses.

Royal Canberra was a decent enough course but again blighted by a few poor holes and they decided in 2010 they would do something about them. Whether it was to 'keep up' is debatable but they had both made changes that didn't work out that well and nor had they addressed the couple of really poor original holes and fixed them.

The Australian was an old MacKenzie influenced course in Sydney and the wealthiest man in Australia in the 1970s, Kerry Packer, funded a Jack Nicklaus 1977 redesign with the aim of making it the permanent home of the Australian Open. The club hired Jack to do it again about 10 years ago.

Healesville was a funny one. It was a terrible course an hour or so out of Melbourne but owned by a huge mutual insurance company where all profits must go back into member benefits - hence they own a whole string of clubs around Victoria. They paid us to completely rebuilt the course- and the same at Torquay, a seaside course near Barwon Heads.
Graham Marsh redid their course Royal Pines in Queensland - where Adam Scott won the PGA Championship yesterday.

Tom completely rebuild the just reopened Gunnamatta course at The National - because the original had over time proved to be the least popular of the 3 courses. Concord too in Sydney - a typically average course north of the bridge and although I haven't played it all reports suggest it's much better.

Harley Kruse did the same at Killara - another really average course which is now miles better.

Finally there were a couple of relocations in Melbourne. Croydon (where Aaron Baddeley grew up playing) and Eastern (where I did) sold up, moved and built new courses.

So there are a whole bunch of reasons.
Some of it was tournament related as many host Australian Opens and other big pro events. RQ was out of necessity. Vic and KH was all about recapturing what was lost.

Rankings have an outsized importance here but the good thing about this list is the courses which have done good work have done well in the rankings. Victoria was probably 10th in 1995 and if they had done nothing probably 10 courses would have passed them by now. That they took the challenge on has allowed them to retain their place despite all the good new courses (including Barnbougle x 2 ,Cape Wickham, St Andrews Beach, 13th Beach and The Dunes) and all the other worthwhile work.
The upshot of all the work is golf architecture is in a much better place here than it was 30 years ago.Hopefully the game is too - I guess that's the long-term question.

[Mike_Clayton]

Pretty amazing that courses ranked  2 through 31 have all had major work done in the last 40 years but none can overtake Royal Melbourne West which has barely been touched.

‘It burns me up that with the billions of dollars spent on course construction in the past fifty years, all the architects together haven’t been able to build another Royal Melbourne.’ Gene Sarazen...

[David_Elvins]

Thomas Dai


Re: renovations.


It's worth noting that with Royal Canberra and Ellerston the obvious exceptions pretty much the entire top 50 is close to the coast on relatively Sandy soil. 


The cost of renovations CAN be very cheap compared to comparable courses in America that are not on Sandy soil.

[Thomas Dai]

Mike,
Many thanks for such a comprehensive answer.
Atb




PS - As I’ve said before, one of the greatest aspects of GCA is the ability to directly correspond with experts in the golf business. Their contribution herein and the ease with which they make themselves and their knowledge openly available is greatly appreciated. Thanks to all.

[Chris Kane]

Australians have become a nation of sad, trans-loving snowflakes....
 

Mark-I’m not sure someone from Melbourne should be calling any other Australian a snowflake after your entire city allowed Patrick Reed’s dickhead caddie to jump off a golf cart, assault a member of the Presidents’ Cup gallery, get back on his cart and drive away without suffering any physical consequences. I can say with 100% certainty if that Trump-loving son of a bitch laid a hand on me, in Sydney or elsewhere, the only vehicle he would leave the scene in is an ambulance.

It’s  perfectly understandable, however, given how distracted people in Melbourne can be... half the crowd was using their phone to order skinny white jeans for their office Christmas party, or a flat white and some smashed avocado toast for delivery via Uber Eats.

Next time you complain all those ‘transsexuals’ ruining life in Australia, it might be an opportunity to look in the mirror. If you can’t find a mirror, try that feature on your iPhone every Melbourne metrosexual uses to take a selfie of their new haircut. 🙂

Mark and Anthony, GolfClubAtlas.com deserves far better than this rubbish.

[Pete_Pittock]

Australians have become a nation of sad, trans-loving snowflakes....
 

Mark-I’m not sure someone from Melbourne should be calling any other Australian a snowflake after your entire city allowed Patrick Reed’s dickhead caddie to jump off a golf cart, assault a member of the Presidents’ Cup gallery, get back on his cart and drive away without suffering any physical consequences. I can say with 100% certainty if that Trump-loving son of a bitch laid a hand on me, in Sydney or elsewhere, the only vehicle he would leave the scene in is an ambulance.

It’s  perfectly understandable, however, given how distracted people in Melbourne can be... half the crowd was using their phone to order skinny white jeans for their office Christmas party, or a flat white and some smashed avocado toast for delivery via Uber Eats.

Next time you complain all those ‘transsexuals’ ruining life in Australia, it might be an opportunity to look in the mirror. If you can’t find a mirror, try that feature on your iPhone every Melbourne metrosexual uses to take a selfie of their new haircut. 🙂

Mark and Anthony, GolfClubAtlas.com deserves far better than this rubbish.

You should note that Mark F is now a guest on GCA.

[Anthony Butler]

Lake Karrinyup is an Alex Russell course but being far from Melbourne (4 hrs flight) it wasn't as good as his courses on the east coast because there weren't the Morcom's building it for him. It was a decent course (Doak 5 in 1993) but over-treed,holes had altered over the years but not improved and greens weren't in great condition.
Both LK and RQ are the leading courses in their respective cities and hold big tournaments -and LK especially took the chance to add some needed length.

Kingston Heath has been at it since 1983 when Graeme Grant took over as superintendent and looked at all the old photos and what had been lost. Like Victoria it was trees (too many and the wrong species) and bunkers filled in which should never have been and once returned transformed the 12th and 15th holes especially.

The Lakes in Sydney lost its original course in 1970 when a freeway went through the middle of the course. Bruce Devlin and Robert Von Hagge did a very good new course - retraining no original holes - but but the mid-2000s it had been so altered by trees and a number of architects that in the words of the President "they just want it fixed" So we rebuilt all the greens and bunkers, removed 100s of trees (taking it back to how the original course was as well as Devlin's version) and reimagined a couple of holes.

Royal Canberra was a decent enough course but again blighted by a few poor holes and they decided in 2010 they would do something about them. Whether it was to 'keep up' is debatable but they had both made changes that didn't work out that well and nor had they addressed the couple of really poor original holes and fixed them.

The Australian was an old MacKenzie influenced course in Sydney and the wealthiest man in Australia in the 1970s, Kerry Packer, funded a Jack Nicklaus 1977 redesign with the aim of making it the permanent home of the Australian Open. The club hired Jack to do it again about 10 years ago.

Healesville was a funny one. It was a terrible course an hour or so out of Melbourne but owned by a huge mutual insurance company where all profits must go back into member benefits - hence they own a whole string of clubs around Victoria. They paid us to completely rebuilt the course- and the same at Torquay, a seaside course near Barwon Heads.
Graham Marsh redid their course Royal Pines in Queensland - where Adam Scott won the PGA Championship yesterday.

Tom completely rebuild the just reopened Gunnamatta course at The National - because the original had over time proved to be the least popular of the 3 courses. Concord too in Sydney - a typically average course north of the bridge and although I haven't played it all reports suggest it's much better.

Rankings have an outsized importance here but the good thing about this list is the courses which have done good work have done well in the rankings. Victoria was probably 10th in 1995 and if they had done nothing probably 10 courses would have passed them by now. That they took the challenge on has allowed them to retain their place despite all the good new courses (including Barnbougle x 2 ,Cape Wickham, St Andrews Beach, 13th Beach and The Dunes) and all the other worthwhile work.
The upshot of all the work is golf architecture is in a much better place here than it was 30 years ago.Hopefully the game is too - I guess that's the long-term question.

Mike, having experienced your work at 5 courses during a recent visit to Australia you should be very proud of your role in the improvement of golf courses in Australia over the last 30 years.


Another factor that has allowed Australia to embrace restoring/redesigning old courses is we had comparatively little in the way of new course construction or restoration in the 50-70s. Unlike the surge of prosperity in the US Post-WW II, Australia remained an economic backwater until the 1980s when the Hawke/Keating reforms to the economy oriented Australia away from being an outpost of Britain and more towards being the English speaking part of Asia.

At that time they were advertising memberships to NSW on Sydney TV for $500. Very little was spent on improving the top private courses because they didn’t have $1m in initiation fees coming into the club each year or $20,000 a week from trade days and visitors fees.


Since many clubs hadn’t significantly touched their course in 50+ years there was no ‘sunk cost’ mentality holding them back when their finances improved and better options were presented.

[Tom_Doak]

Since many clubs hadn’t significantly touched their course in 50+ years there was no ‘sunk cost’ mentality holding them back when their finances improved and better options were presented.

Well, 'better' is in the eye of the beholder, but I think it's fair to say that there were a lot of clubs that made a mess of their courses at some point in there, too.  There was probably half a billion dollars sunk into new courses in Queensland from the 1980's forward, and not too many of them are high on this list.  Just in Melbourne, Commonwealth, Huntingdale, Royal Melbourne (East) and Yarra Yarra all did some poor work in the early 2000's, and the renovations of courses around Sydney were pretty stale, too . . . Brian Slawnik will put one of his kids through college fixing stuff that was just fine when I first saw it in 1988 [which is 30 years ago, ironically the time frame Mike used to discuss how much things have improved].


But there have been major improvements at a lot of courses more recently.  It all comes down to talent and intent, really.  Just like MacKenzie's landing in 1926 had a huge effect on the future of golf Down Under, Mike's work and ours and that of a couple of other architects has had a domino effect on getting those courses back up to snuff . . . and creating a few more worthwhile venues.

[Anthony Butler]

Since many clubs hadn’t significantly touched their course in 50+ years there was no ‘sunk cost’ mentality holding them back when their finances improved and better options were presented.

Well, 'better' is in the eye of the beholder, but I think it's fair to say that there were a lot of clubs that made a mess of their courses at some point in there, too.  There was probably half a billion dollars sunk into new courses in Queensland from the 1980's forward, and not too many of them are high on this list. 

Tom, Queensland was not considered to be part of Australia until the 90s.   

Before that time, my friends in the music industry used to say they had ‘migrated’  from Brisbane.

But you are correct, that Mick _____ fellow who built Sanctuary Cove had no taste in golf course architecture.... he did, however, bring Frank Sinatra out for the opening.

[Anthony Butler]

As proof of the statement above: Greg Norman is from Queensland and we all know he’s doesn’t act or sound like any other Australian.