Lakelands Golf Club

Located a few miles from Surfers Paradise, between the beaches on the Gold Coast and the inland rainforests, Lakelands Golf Club is promoted as Australia's first Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course. It supposedly took twenty five years looking for the perfect location for Jack’s first Australian design project before the Golden Bear Construction team discovered the Lakelands site.

Lakelands is certainly one of the best presented public courses in the country and is immaculately conditioned throughout – with a fair number of trademark Nicklaus bunkers strategically situated along the way. Greens have been sown with tifdwarf Bermuda grass as it is highly adapted to heat and heavy traffic, allowing all year round play in very hot summer temperatures.

The course can be set up to a monstrous 7,138 yards in length though with five tee settings per hole, the handicap golfer can play a more comfortable yardage. Both the front nine and the back nine are configured in classic fashion, with two par fives, two par threes and five par fours on each half of the course. The inward half is the more daunting of the two, with not one of the par fours measuring less than 400 yards in length.

A word of warning when visiting Lakelands. If you expect to walk the course, you will have to purchase the “Signature Caddie” service, where guests are allowed to walk the fairways – “a privilege exclusively enjoyed by members only” – leaving the caddie to look after the clubs, otherwise you will be playing cart golf.