Cottesloe Golf Club

The Perth suburb of Cottesloe – famed for its beaches, cafés and relaxed lifestyle – is where the Cottesloe Golf Club was formed in 1908. The membership quickly outgrew the original, confined 9-hole site (still used by Sea View Golf Club) and so they decamped to a larger property at Swanbourne in 1931 where a course was soon fashioned amongst the scrub and sand hills by club professional David Anderson.

The Thomson, Wolveridge and Perrott design company made significant changes to the layout in the early 1980s when the club lost part of the course to outside development and in more recent times, Graham Marsh – former Cottesloe club champion and now acclaimed architect – carried out a number of improvements in time for the club’s centenary in 2008.

The course begins with a straightforward, short par four to help ease golfers into their round. Thereafter, things get a little tougher. Hole 3 is not so benign, a 436-yard par four with out of bounds to the right of the fairway and the 6th hole plays uphill, doglegging right to a green with a pronounced right to left slope.

On the inward half, the par fives at holes 14 and 17 – each with intimidating fairway bunkers – are very demanding whilst the 407-yard 18th is played uphill all the way to a green that slopes from front to back.