Golf In Australia by Matt Cohn is posted...

[Ran Morrissett]

...under In My Opinion.

In it, Matt details the attributes of golf down under and highlights his favorite courses/holes and features that he saw while living in Australia. Plus, with over 30 photos included, the reader gets a very good look at some of Melbourne's famed bunkering as well as another rarity - some not so green grasses!

After reading Matt's piece, I'm sure you'll agree - Australia is a place that every golf architect student must visit.

Cheers,

[Jeff_Lewis]

THE golf mecca. No question. The shotmaking conditions of the british isles. The weather of california. The food of asia. The friendliness of the aussies. Nowhere better.

[Shane Gurnett]

Excellent work Matt.

I guess this just highlights how lucky we are down here in terms of quality of courses, accessability, affordability, playability etc. Golf in Australia, and Mebourne in particular is in a very healthy state.

[Mike_Clayton]

Matt
Very good. It's always interesting to get the perspective of someone from outside because we know the course so well and take a lot for granted.
I think the best point was that there is only one 'mistake' free golf course here- Royal Melbourne
Kingston Heath is close but they have that bunker in the 11th fairway which doesn't work -by the way Graeme Grant did it not TWP.
Graeme was the superintendent there for almost 20 years and was responsible for all the great restoration work there so it's hard to be critical because his overall contribution was immense.
Commonwealth was but no more sadly but there is still so much great stuff there - all the work they managed to leave alone.
Victoria likewise - all the wounds there are self - inflicted. Hopefully we will get to finish the job in the next couple of years.

The new first four at Peninsula North are looking like turning out well so that will really help.

I'm thinking Newcastle could do with some of the quality bunkering of the sandbelt because there is the basis of something really good. Last time I was there they had redone the first green with a ridiculous small tier in the middle and it looked awful - not least because they couldn't cut it properly

What we really struggle with down here is that there are more good courses in Melbourne than there are in the rest of the country.
It;s a pity you didn't see Royal Adelaide although there were some very strange things done for the Australian Open in 1998
Probably it's the third best course in the country.

[Chris Kane]

Matt,
If there were people who thought as you do, and were able to articulate those thoughts as well as you've done here, the state of the game in Victoria (and Australia) would be even better than it currently is.

Fantastic write-up.  Makes me realise how lucky we are, despite the constant whinging about "architect a wrecked this course" etc.  I guess we take some of this for granted.

Don't you like TWP???

Also, can someone name another course anywhere in the world where a 21 year-old kid can play a course that got an Honourable Mention in the Golf Mag Top 100 for $7.50?!!!?

[Richard_Macafee]

Well done Matt, very interesting.

I love the fact that you ranked National-Ocean below Goonawarra and Albert Park! Hilarious.

Glad you enjoyed it all, we are very spoiled here in Melbourne

[brad_miller]

Matt, thanks for the write-up, bet a lot of people are looking how to get to Aussie one day. The first golf picture, the 9th at NSW just about shows it all, what great natural movement!

How do the best you played compare with the best you have played in the USA? Green contours at Prairie Dunes vs RM? etc?

Are you back playing college golf for one more year? If so good luck.

Ran, this write-up, the people that Matt was able to meet, stay with, play with, is just another reason that what a special place GCA is, almost as special as playing golf in the sand belt. Keep on protecting and restoring the best of the old and influencing the new and yet to be.

[Glen_Fergo]

:)What a great all around article by Matt!!

So insightful, descriptive and resourceful.

I agree with so much of what he said about the courses he played/visited. In Australia the naturalness of the courses and their design really spoils us.

I've played both social and tounament golf at many of the sites and as he says their is always something about the hole/s, course/s that you haven't experienced before.

Mike Clayton's comments on the topic were interesting as well, he is obviously a GCA that thinks in terms of what the course needs and not open to just changing things to the way a short sighted Committee or developer wants.

This is not meant to be a total knock on TWP but it seems they often design or redesign on the basis of their collective opinion of what golf course should be rather than waht suits the course as it stands. Similarly Bob Charles has a good reputation in New Zealand but he suggested the best way to fix Paraparaumu was to remove every single tree (not shrubs) to make it back into a links, not really a practical solution.

Let's hope that GCA's the world over start to study more the roots of design the world over and try to invlove the benefits of the type of conditioning and design that is prevalent in Australian sandbelt courses in particular.

You'll find, I think, that such things will help in the fight against technology for rarely are the courses mentioned taken apart in tournament golf and rarely do they need to be tricked up like some US Open courses (2002 Aust Open aside where such decisions are left not just to amateurs but amateurs who can't play worth a crap anyway).

[Shane Gurnett]

Matt, now that you have had the experience of playing all these fine courses, is there anything in the US that is similar in style/bunkering/conditioning to a sandbelt course ?(notwithstanding, as you have pointed out, there are differences between all the first tier Melbourne courses).

[Chris Kane]

Matt,
Of all the courses you played here:
a) how many had you heard of before you came?
b) which ones most surprised you in terms of being under-rated or over-rated?

[TomSteenstrup]

Sorry for a stupid question, but where is the article? I don't see it in the "In My Opinion" section...

[Chris Kane]

Tom,
Right-hand column in the In My Opinion section.  It's on the top.  Or, here.

Interested to hear your thoughts...

[NicP]

Matt,

        Great write up mate! I wish I could have taken you to Victoria to play... maybe next time. I can only echo the other guys here.... we are spoiled beyond belief.

Nic

[Mike_Clayton]

NicP

I'm just jealous of all those who got to play the courses 50 years ago - I suspect there are not too many that are better now .
Maybe they are in better condition but that's all.

[TomSteenstrup]

Tom,
Right-hand column in the In My Opinion section.  It's on the top.  Or, here.

I looked at the page in Netscape and in Internet Explorer. There appears to be some HTML problem that makes Netscape skip the Matt Cohn part of the list.

Thanks for the link, Chris.

Tom

[tonyt]

As a Melbournite, I too have enjoyed the references to TWP. So many works around Australia, so few that get great accolades. Mike Clayton and others are required to show diplomacy in their comments, so they can't come out swinging. He got first pick of the land at National over Greg Norman (as Matt alluded to), yet the members want his course renovated and the time sheet is always three quarters empty. Greg's Moonah course on the other hand, debuts at number 9 on the Australian Golf Digest top 100 course rankings.

One can only look ahead to TWP's (mainly T) Sandhurst Club nearby, with a par 3 with a North Berwick inspired wall around the left and rear of the green. Problem is, Nth Berwick's looks like it's been there a while (funny that), whilst at Sandhurst, it looks like a mini golf prop. Golfers will walk onto the green, and look for a windmill to putt into.

[George Blunt]

Matt,

Great article, pity we couldn't catch up when you were here in Sydney, and that Royal Sydney GC was undergoing renovation.

I agree with tonyt, and would add, wait until they play the Australian Open at Moonah! (Not the Greg Norman "Moonah at the National").

When I played it, and apparently it has been softened since then, it was as close to an unplayable course as you could find.  Penal in nature, with a combination of high rough and generally harsh winds, Thomson makes no apology for creating a course that will severly test (humiliate?) the pros.  

This begs the question of where golf course architecture is headed.  Do we really want to create courses that less than 1% of the golfing population can enjoy?  Would Alistair Mackenzie have built a course like this??

Once again well done Matt,

Cheers,

George

[Ran Morrissett]

Mike Clayton's comments re: the course at Stockton are spot on - "there is the basis of something really good."

Based on one visit, a golf architecture fan may not see that much that overtly appeals to him (though the unforced simplicity of Newcastle's architecture is noteworthy in itself and accounts for much of its charm).

As Mike points out, the little pits for bunkers hold none of the visual appeal of its cousins in the sandbelt. And Newcastle's greens are certainly more about tilt than sophisticated interior contours.

And yet...isn't Newcastle's topography among the very best in Australia? Don't the consistently rolling dunes provide an ideal landscape for the enjoyment of the game? Didn't the two architects do a GREAT job of routing the holes and of "transmuting the landscape into an experience" as H. Hutchinson once wrote?

For those who haven't played there, the one shot 16th is the only flat hole tee to green on the course with dunes ranging from four-eight feet down the 11th to thirty-forty feet elsewhere - perfect movement for the playing of golf without ever complaining of hilliness.

Newcastle's presentation masks the fact that the course is indeed set through rolling dunes. This is a shame - clearing back the bush and/or highlighting more exposed sandy areas and/or fashioning more visually appealing bunkers ala the sandbelt would make Newcastle a visual stunner.

As it presently is, only those that play the course X times fall under its spell, and frankly, that rarely includes foreign play.

[Mike_Clayton]

Ran

I was a fam of Newcastle from the time of my first visit in 1977.
I have only been back a few times -the latest only last October and it gets better.
I don't know if you ever saw the North course at Peninsula but it is over almost exactly the same type of land. Newcastle is probably better routed but redoing most of the bunkering over the past couple of years showed what sort of differance the same type of work would make at Stockton

[NicP]

Mike,

        I wish we could run into Marty McFly, The Doc and their Delorian (spelling?) and set the clock for about 1935 to see what the Sandbelt was like when it was raw and un-tarnished by scores of Captains and Presidents "making their mark".

And by the way, there would be no titanium..... just wood!

[Andrew_P]

Nice work Matt. A very well considered and detailed piece.

I played Newcastle for the first time in Dec 02 and to be honest was really impressed first up (although I read the Confidential Guide write up the night before which may have clouded my judgement!).

Looking back on it I can appreciate Mike's point about the 1st green, the less than sandbelt quality bunkering and that it's overtreed.

However I spent most of my time just admiring the land, the routing and the overall quality of the holes. Tom D was right: there is hardly a weak hole on the property and the place smacks of minimalism in the design. It's hard to spot anything artificial looking anywhere.

Nic - the bast thing about going back to 1935 in a time machine is that we'd be able to take a digital camera with us!

[Chris Kane]

Nic and Andrew,

It begs the question: is there a sandbelt course that is better in 2003 than it was in 1935?  Just guessing, but I'd imagine that almost of all them are inferior to what they were 68 years ago.  Can't think of one that would be recognisably better.

[TEPaul]

Matt:

That's a terrific piece and story you put together there and a wonderful permanent addition to Golfclubatlas. The photos seem so representative too.

There seems much to learn from the courses, the architecture and the maintenance practices of Australian golf. And what there is to learn certainly aren't curiosities--seems to me they're some of the real fundamentals of good all around golf and architecture.

Of particular interest to me is something that seems so prevalent in those photos, mostly the more open courses. That's the way some of the architectural (man-made) "lines" match and flow so beautifully with the natural "lines" of many of those sites all forming together a sense of curious "naturalism".

But the real curiosity to me are those sharp parabolic "lines" of many of those Australian bunker lips and edges. If one has ever stood in raw dunesland in high winds one can see those natural sharp parabolas of sand here and there in constant mini-alteration before one's eyes. But those sharp parabolic "lines" are so interesting against everything else that's visible. In a way the architectural parabolic lines of many of those Australian bunkers twisting and turning against their site's natural twists and turns are the same as the raw dunesland experience watching those natural parabolas forming. A truly interesting combination of the man-made architectural and the natural.

There's a lot to be learned, I think, how that kind of thing can work well visually (natural looking) somewhere and not somewhere else. They just look to fit in so well in Australia but they really don't in ANGC, for instance. An interesting comparison.

[Matt_Cohn]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the compliments, I really put a lot of time into that piece so I'm glad it seems to have hit a chord.

As for a few of the questions I've been asked,

-Comparisons with American courses aren't so easy. I've never seen a course in America that, on the whole, reminded me of a sandbelt course. Prairie Dunes is an interesting comparison. The greens themselves would be at home on the Sandbelt, but then they're surrounded by 3-inch rough. I've tried to imagine Prairie Dunes with the grass shaved for 20 yards around each green...whoa! Then you get back to the tees at PD and there aren't any options at all, because it's so narrow.

I really haven't seen courses in America comparable in terms of strategy, or the overall feel...there just aren't courses here, that I've seen, that share the same general characteristics. Not that I've seen them all! But I can't say to anyone, "You know, golf in the sandbelt is a lot like the front nine at so-and-so golf club." There just isn't anything I've seen here like that.

-As far as college, I'm on the golf team at OU and I will graduate in May. I have no idea what happens then...I'm looking at graduate schools (most likely in sport psychology), and jobs, and I'm considering almost every English-speaking country in the world - I seem to have the travel bug at the moment!

Things are so up-in-the-air for me, and to be honest it's a bit scary - but exciting, too. By the way, if anybody has a job available for either the summer or more long term, I think there's a good chance I will work for a year before I start anything else, and I don't have anything lined up yet.

-Before I came, I had heard of NSW, RM, KH, YY, Metro, Commonwealth because of you guys, Victoria sort of...I had maybe heard a few other names. I knew of the 6 or 7 sandbelt courses and not much else.

-Commonwealth was the biggest surprise both ways Chris, although I certainly got to know it better than the others. At first, I was surprised at some of the things that didn't quite fit...then by December, I was surprised at just how good of a course was "in there somewhere".

I'm happy to answer any more questions! One more comment I should add is that our Aussie GCA'ers have a really great understanding of their courses and their history, which is always good to see.

[Joel_Stewart]

I'm bumping this to show what a great piece this is by Matt on the heals of his piece about Lincoln park.