The Grand Golf Club

The Greg Norman-designed course at the Grand Golf Club started out as an 18-hole layout for the Gilston Golf Club in 1990 but its Japanese owners had spent so much on construction that, within days of opening, the course was closed due to a severe and ultimately terminal cash flow problem.

And so, incredibly, this sleeping beauty lay dormant for the next six years until a consortium of Gold Coast businessmen – in the shape of Grand Investments Australia Limited – purchased the site and embarked on the refurbishment of a course that had literally gone to seed.

Greg Norman’s design company was approached again to reshape and rework everything from tees, fairways and bunkers to greens with the result that eighteen months later, in October 1997, the Grand was formally re-opened as a private members course – talk about a phoenix rising from the ashes!

Within a further four years, the rebirth of the course was complete when the Grand Golf Club hosted the 2001 Australian Open. Now imagine scripting that as a golf story ten years before – you would have been laughed at for dreaming up such an extraordinary tale!

The toughest hole on the outward half is the 452-yard, par four, 9th which plays from an elevated tee to a narrow fairway with sand left and a large tree right of the landing area. Water protects the front and there are two large bunkers at the back of the largest putting surface on the course.

The 413-yard, par four, 13th on the back nine is split in two by a fairway bunker. Trees must also be negotiated further along in the middle of the fairway before it doglegs slightly right to a tricky green where a four on the card is an excellent score.