Liverpool

There was a golf course in play outside Liverpool at the start of the 20th century but things fizzled out during World War I. Golf didn’t get started again until the late 1920s, with another course in an area called Mrs. Bull’s Paddock, but it too didn’t last long.

Yet another layout appeared in 1931 within the Collingwood Estate, designed by Al Howard’s father Tommy, and this remained in use even after the intervention of World War II – unfortunately, it didn’t get past the start of the 1970s.

A main road was planned to go straight through the middle of the course, causing the club to relocate to its current site, with Bob Green of Golf and Recreation Planners Pty. Ltd. setting out eighteen new holes on what were previously described as dairy paddocks.

Fairways were routed round a handful of small lakes on a 110-acre property and several of the peripheral holes have Prosper Creek as a natural boundary. The inward half lies largely inside the outward half, with both nines returning to a clubhouse that sits at the highest point on the course.

The toughest hole on the scorecard arrives early, at the 420-metre 2nd, which is a long, demanding par four with out of bounds down the right side. The signature hole doesn’t arrive until the last, at the 167-metre 18th, where water protects the front and right side of the home green.