Hamilton

Established in 1903, Hamilton Golf Club moved around a couple of times during its first decade in existence before its members finally found the ideal site for their golf course. H T Gillies, a local lawyer, and Arthur Duncan, a national Amateur Champion from Wellington, laid out the fairways which were unveiled to an expectant membership in April of 1913.

Named St Andrews, the course at Hamilton Golf Club remains largely unaltered since Charles Redhead revised the course in the late 1920s. It's a fine example of a solid parkland layout that has stood the golfing test of time in a very peaceful setting that borders the Waikato River.

A feature hole on the front nine is the 495-yard 4th which doglegs from tee to green with the river awaiting shots that stray too far from the fairway. Unusually, the round ends with a 165-yard par three, one of only three short holes on the scorecard. Played uphill with out of bounds to the right and an enormous bunker in front of the green. It’s a more testing finish than many first time visitors realise.

The club hosted six national Amateur championships between 1920 and 1994 whilst the New Zealand Open has also been held over the course on five occasions. A look at the statistics for the Open champions at Hamilton reveals an improvement in total score every time the event took place here, starting with 304 for Joe Kirkwood Snr in 1920 and ending with 272 for Bill Dunk in 1975.

In 2019, the club embarked on a bunker redevelopment and tree thinning programme under the stewardship of Greg Turner. The project was tackled in three stages over three years and was completed in October 2021.