Brookwater Golf & Country Club

The course at Brookwater Golf Club has become quite a talking point in its few short years of existence. It is essentially a public course and therefore receives a very good airing with the golfing public. The word from the golfing vox populi is that it is a very tough test, too tough some say.

Brookwater has been carved out of native eucalyptus forest on rolling land. Some more exuberant reviewers have called it Queensland’s answer to Augusta National. Even if it isn’t quite the dogwood and azalea lined glory of America’s South, the presence of the eucalyptus closely hugging the fairways certainly renders a unique atmosphere, particularly in the earlier holes where no sign of residential development is visible.

The Greg Norman and Bob Harrison design has been executed very well. The holes sit comfortably in the land without anything seeming too forced. The course is laid out as two circuits of nine, the front nine in an anti-clockwise direction and the back nine clockwise. No two fairways run parallel and with the ubiquitous eucalyptus cover you have a nice feeling of isolation.

For the vast majority of us who have only a vague idea as to how the ball will leave the driver face, there is a requirement to plot your way around this course. I found that the best way to do this is to gauge the widest point on the fairway and club to that point. By making some allowance for miss-hits, you lessen the risk of becoming a red-faced woodsman. By following this strategy, the longer hitter will find the driver superfluous on most of the par fours.

The above passage is an extract from The Finest Golf Courses of Asia and Australasia by James Spence. Reproduced with kind permission.

In 2017, fifteen years after Brookwater first opened for play, Greg Norman Golf Course Design completed a course renovation, which included strategic design changes to greens, fairways and bunkers.