Brian, Mike,
I take your points on the par 3s at The Lakes, an undistinguished group.
But I don't agree that all the holes across the expressway are so bad. The 8th, for example, is a rollicking good par 5 down the hill, and the 6th a potentially confounding short par 4.
Chris,
On finishing holes, the 18th at Royal Sydney is probably the best of the bunch you've put up. But the best finishing hole in Sydney might be at Camden Lakeside (courtesy of our much-maligned friends at TWP).
For your interest, and the interest of others who haven’t had the benefit of the George Blunt tour of Royal Sydney, I’ve also posted a few mental notes I made about the course after a game there a while back…
There are a number of very good holes, and a couple of great ones. Better than that though is the fact that Royal Sydney is one of those courses that is greater than the sum of its parts. It flows nicely from tee to green to tee, and on what looked like a crowded Sunday afternoon, we played 18 holes as a three ball at a comfortable pace in under 4 hours. You walk off wanting to play it again.
Overall, it's a really lovely place to play golf. The worst thing you could say about it is that it’s a gorgeous manicured park in the very best part of Sydney.
You could reasonably argue that Royal Sydney is the second best course in Sydney – behind NSW of course - although I think Terrey Hills just shades it, and I can also forgive The Lakes many sins for a few of the holes on the back nine. But more than anything else that statement will confirm suspicions about the relative quality of Melbourne and Sydney golf.
The bunkering at RS is probably the best in Sydney, almost Sand Belt-esque. But the course as a whole is not in the same class as Commonwealth, and maybe not quite as good as Victoria or Woodlands either. At a pinch, I'd say it's better than Peninsula South, which is a course I like a lot.
The front nine covers generally more interesting terrain than the back, with a quirky short opener that can jump up and bite you if you start either too aggressively or are over cautious, followed by a consistently good stretch of holes from the fourth through the ninth.
The second is a pretty straightforward three shotter (that’s three shots into the south-easterly, it might be one shot less for long hitters with the nor-easter behind on a summer afternoon). The hole moves up a gradual rise into a wide, shallow green protected in the most no-nonsense way, with a big deep, flat-bottomed bunker front and centre. Looking toward the green after your tee shot, the hole seems to suggest you play your second well out to the left, but that side has some subtle trouble in the shape of sloping, fluffy lies to complicate your approach.
The third hole is a gentle downhill 150 metres to a small and well-bunkered green that sits out by itself in a clear area between the previous green and the next tee. It’s a bit like the 3rd hole at Shirley (a personal favourite) or the 13th at Barwon Heads, only this time with bunkers.
Four and five are both classy strong par fours. The site is like a big dish, and for most of the front nine the routing makes a kind of scallop pattern around the inside of the perimeter, with many holes playing from the rim down into the bowl from the tee and then more-or-less back up again into elevated greens (four and five are the best examples, but each varies the theme brilliantly and they manage to be very different holes).
Six, like all the par threes (3, 6, 14 and 17), is a good'un (George has his reservations about the 17th, which I'd have to agree has a very severe, quite elevated green complex for a 190 metre plus hole into the southerly. But I wouldn't change it. It's a tough three, but you'd have to do something pretty ugly to make more than four.
Seven is a goodish par five with tree-lined OB all the way down the left and a significant downhill drop about 240 metres from the tee, which must play right into the hands of the longer pros. I hit a good drive from the back tee to the very brow of the hill. Baddeley & Co. must have been flying the top of the hill at the Australian Open a couple of years ago and running all the way to the bottom, leaving a short iron in for an eagle putt. Needless to say, I went on to ruin two decent shots with a finely skulled feel-wedge to make certain of my bogey.
There are no “back walls”, recalling Ran Morrisset’s long-ago post on The Old Course. Most of the greens are really built up like plateaus at the back, and fall away into either steep, closely mown gutters or smothering long couch. You don't want to be long I kept telling myself on the decelerating downswing.
Eight is a very nearly great uphill short par four with the flag on the horizon, a bit like a mirror-reverse of the 10th at Royal Melbourne West (or the 13th at The Ocean, which is a homage to RM #10) only without so much dogleg and going slightly the other way at the end. It’s one of those holes that I’m sure gets harder the more you play it. I'm glad I didn’t have a clear image of the green before I hit the approach. It's like a little piece of Pinehurst, that falls away on every side: down a 20' swale at the back or into a head-high trap at the front. The only fault I would find with eight is that the best approach is from the left, but most of the trouble off the tee is right, which kind of makes your mind up for you and doesn’t tempt you to play a little nearer the danger for a greater reward.
While the routing on the front nine generally makes the most of the land, there are a few dull holes at the start of the back nine running across very flat ground through single parallel lines of trees. 11 is a very long and exacting par four (probably not as tough as I made it play, going from treeline to treeline for a neat six).
The most enjoyable holes on the back nine are the par fives, 13 and 16, especially 16. In fact, you get to the 16th tee and breathe a sigh of relief to finally have a fairway in front of you that isn't crowded on both sides by tall trees. The bunkering both in the fairway and around the green on 16 is gorgeous. 17 as I said is a tough one shotter. 18 has an impressive second shot, but you can look at the hole two ways, I’m tempted to say that, despite the overwhelmingly impressive shot into the green framed by that monolithic clubhouse, the hole is really just a dogleg created by straight lines of trees. But those same trees really give the hole a kind of volume, and when you look back later from the green or from the balcony of the clubhouse, you can almost feel the space coming around that tree-defined corner like a train coming out of a tunnel.
If Royal Sydney was in Melbourne, it probably wouldn’t rate in the top 4 or 5 courses. But that’s no shame, the top 4 or 5 courses in Melbourne are among the best 100 courses in the world.
Anthony.