Australian Open rota

[Mike Clayton]

Chris

Good enough to move to Monomeath Ave.

[Chris Kane]

Mike...

Hahahaha.

If Tiger makes it to ML I'll take back what I said about ML being unviable.  They'll have no crowd number issues, as long as they price the tickets reasonably...ie. don't follow the NZ Open approach.

[Doc Kildare]

Nah, thats bulldust Mike...

..Tige is holding off until they have it at Laguna, Paradise Palms, or Port Douglas so he can go fishing for marlin or Barra on the weekend when he misses the cut.

Steve can also lob down at the Townsville speedway to race his carts too.

[Chris Kane]

Doc,

I think he'd be better at ML: he can miss the cut then spend the weekend on the Peninsula.

Maybe he could go swimming at Cheviot Beach: now that would be a story!

[Justin_Ryan]

Mike
Isn't it somewhat heretical to suggest that we possibly don't have as many great or very good golf courses as we would like to think.  Notwithstanding the fact that many very good courses aren't suited to tournament play, I think you could well be right.

Chris
Don't you have homework to do???

[Mike Clayton]

Justin

The 50th best course in Britain would make the top 15 here -easily
I'd like to think the second 10 in the rankings were better than they are.The pity is they once were.

[Chris Kane]

Mike,

Of the courses you've played worldwide (I know you're yet to see all the USA greats), where would the Australian 2nd 10 rate?  

Golf Magazine's World Ranking had:
Royal Melbourne Composite 10
Kingston Heath 30
New South Wales 47
Royal Adelaide 80
Metro Honorable Mention
Commonwealth HM
Victoria HM

These are all first ten courses, with the exception being that Commonwealth's position could be argued for days and days - I won't get into that here.

Is there really a significant drop in quality between the top tier and the rest?  I'm not making a judgement: just interested in what you think.

[MikeClayton]

Chris

I think Victoria is the closest to getting into the top100
Who knows where they really are but Tom Doak got them right in the CG.
Metro,Australian,Royal Sydney,YarraYarra got 6s
Only Metro of that lot is in the top 10 currently IMO
According to the ranking The Lakes is the 12th best -Doak 5
Then there is a bunch of new courses -The Vines,Kennedy Bay,The Glades and some old ones living on their reputations -some earned some not.
Where does that leave them?
Somewhere between 150 and 400 I guess.

[Chris Kane]

Back in 1991, the Golf Magazine list had:

Royal Melbourne 6
Kingston Heath 28
NSW 58
Royal Adelaide 53
Victoria 84
Commonwealth 82
Australian 96

Apparantly at that time Metropolitan 'hadn't been discovered'.

I suppose it proves that despite Australia having lots of high-quality courses, particularly on the sandbelt, very few of them are what could be called "world-class".  Generally they're fun courses to play, and on the local scene are considered excellent, but do they stand up when considered alongside the world's elite?  Except for RM, it seems not.