Capital Golf Club

The 18 holes at the exclusive Capital Golf Club lie less than a mile to the east of the top ranked Kingston Heath Golf Club and they form the ultra-private golfing playground of Lloyd J Williams, the highly successful property developer and breeder of thoroughbred horses.

Rated by Forbes as one of Australia’s richest men, Mr. Williams was instrumental in setting up the Crown Casino in Melbourne – one of the largest gambling establishments in the world – so he knows a thing or two about giving others the opportunity to ride their luck on a grand scale.

It’s been argued that that’s precisely what happened back in the late 1990s when Peter Thomson’s respected design company was presented with an enormous budget to construct a world-class course on a relatively flat, featureless tract of land. Williams wagered that the old master would deliver a masterpiece but instead, some feel he ended up with a rather lackluster layout that falls way short of expectation.

A number of major flaws have been cited with the course including the excessive use of length to protect par (there are back-to-back par fives on both the front and back nine), a lack of variety in the design of the four par threes (they each measure between 195 yards and 208 yards), the insensitive use of bunkers (158 at the last count and many of them are absolutely enormous) and, worst of all, an absence of any strategic merit on many of the holes.

Despite the criticisms from some commentators, others genuinely believe that Capital Golf Club holds its own in the company of the famous and revered sandbelt courses. Undoubtedly, Capital’s greens command respect and the course conditioning and facilities are polished to absolute perfection, but does Capital deserve an Australian Top 100 ranking?

If you’ve played Capital and have an opinion, we’d love you to write a course review and let the world know what you think. We can certainly vouch for the Chairman’s Pie.