New South Wales Golf Club is one of the most spectacular golf courses in Australia and it’s one of the toughest tests in the country.
New South Wales Golf Club
New South Wales Golf Club is one of the most spectacular golf courses in Australia and it’s one of the toughest tests in the country.
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New South Wales is a majestic course set out on glorious undulating golfing terrain bordering the Pacific Ocean, just to the south of Sydney. I am reluctant to call it a true links for its inland holes, bordered as they are by thick scrub, are more like rolling downland in nature. Nevertheless the combination works well in producing an eclectic set of holes that keeps the golfer on his/her toes throughout, on a course which fully merits its World Top 100 rating.
From the polished and incredibly warm welcome to the comfortable clubhouse, NSW exudes class. How can one ever criticise a golf course designed by Alister MacKenzie, but I thought it started a little slowly and the nature of the land led to a number of blind shots from both the tee and for the second shot. Obviously this would be less of an issue when playing the course on subsequent occasions.
These minor moans apart, there is so much to like here. We were lucky to play on a warm sunny day with mainly no more than a gentle breeze and walking the immaculate fairways and greens was a treat in itself.
The golf course gets going with the long straight par four at 4 before the two most renowned holes at 5 and 6, which are covered in great detail in other reports on this site. It seems that the holes around the middle of the course are not that highly regarded but I found the 550 yarder at 8 and quirky shortish par four at 9 to be both excellent holes. I particularly like the choice from the tee at nine to take the high road to a sloping fairway, or the low road which leaves an uphill approach over a clump of scrub to what is now a raised green.
The undulating par five at 12 is another gorgeous challenge but it is the stretch of par fours from 13 to 16 that is the highlight of NSW for me. There are so many choices for signature hole on this course, but the beautiful left dogleg at 13 to what seems an infinity green floating on the ocean or the equally thrilling drive and uphill approach at the cliff top 14th could both be in the mix. A similarly challenging uphill drive follows before the hole turns right at the tough 15th as the golfer heads back inland and then there is arguably the hardest of this stretch of holes, a fearsome 430 yard tight left dogleg at 16.
But after this there’s no easy finish with the short 17th playing to a green that falls away sharply on three sides before the more reassuring straight 540 yard par five at 18 to a well-protected green below the clubhouse. My photo with this report shows the open green expanse in front of the clubhouse which incorporates both the greens at 9 and 18.
Tim Elliott
Alex Frolish has been a pilot for approaching 20 years and now travels to all corners of the globe in his role as a commercial airline pilot. His passion for flight is only equalled by his passion for golf and golf travel. Having picked up a golf club over 35 years ago when aged just 3 years old, Alex has played over 600 courses across every continent on planet earth furnished with a fairway. Over the next few months you’ll be able to follow Alex’s golfing travels as he brings you anecdotes of his life both in the air and on the course. Eleven rounds of golf, played on four different continents, in one month. It sounds crazy when you say it out loud. Even crazier still is that, in travelling to those rounds of golf I flew over 24000 air miles and spent over sixty five hours some six miles above the surface of the earth. You could well assume I was severely inefficient in my golf planning, were it not for the fact that most of my golf is played while I’m away on my travels as a commercial pilot. The month started in Australia, at a golf course that is the furthest from my home in the U.K. that I have ever played. I had visited the peninsula where New South Wales Golf Club is located once before, playing at St Michaels Golf Club on a previous visit. The course was very pleasant and a decent challenge, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking enviously over the boundary fence toward the Alister Mackenzie crafted greens of New South Wales. Our flight landed in Sydney a little after 5am, and our flight path meant I got a birds-eye view of the golf course on our final approach. A little over 3 hours later, I was standing on the 1st tee of the 49th best golf course in the world, teeing it up in the Saturday morning medal competition! Surreal is an understatement. Now you would think that with pretty much no sleep and barely enough time to collect my golf bag, never mind time for some breakfast and a practice putt, my golf might have arrived in a rather jet-lagged state. It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to my playing partners when I found the first fairway, followed by the first green, and subsequently holed the 10 foot putt for the most improbable of birdie starts. Everyone knows the old golfing adage, never birdie the 1st hole, and even though my ball striking remained surprisingly intact, Dr. Mackenzie slowly exacted his pound of flesh, and by the middle of the back nine my card was in no danger of producing an out-of-towner upset. New South Wales is one of the most unique and beautiful golf courses you could ever play. The green sites and bunkering are wondrous, the routing through the native bush is playful and utilises the ground wonderfully, while the reveal as you crest the hill on the par 5 5th and the walk to the par 3 6th tee, before you play your shot over the crashing waves, has to be one of the most jaw dropping experiences on any of my golfing travels. My next round would be played just over 48 hours later, well over 3000 miles away in Asia. SICC Bukit sounds like an item you might need after a late night in the bar at the annual member/guest, but the Bukit course at Singapore Island Country Club is much more tasteful than that. The variety of the native foliage and trees, the improbably undulating land and the supremely pure playing surfaces made this a memorable jaunt in the jungle to complete my trip out east. My next round would be some 18 time zones west of where I’d played my game in Sydney just a few days before. San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area is one of my favourite places in the world. Life over here is nearly as good as the golf, and although I’d visited many of the famous haunts, San Francisco Golf Club had always been one that had eluded me. On this trip, I was lucky enough to change that. SFGC is a traditional and private place. The club sign outside the gates probably rivals Augusta for being one of the most photographed golf signs in the world. Due to the club employing a strict no phones policy, that photograph is often the only evidence that you visited here. For the trip, I rented a car from Avis, plumping for a mid-size that I hoped would be low key and not to brash so as not to ruffle too many feathers at the gate. Imagine my horror when I was told I’d been upgraded due to a lack of cars to a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4XE, a car that cries ‘I’m here’ at the top of its lungs! As the gates drew open to allow my car inside, I crawled along the driveway, parking as far away from sight as possible. My exit from the car was akin to that of a special forces raid, extracting myself and my clubs in record time, without anybody noticing. The golf course at SFGC is truly spectacular, routed across ground that contains a historic site in the political history of the U.S.A. I’m no American history expert, but even I can could feel the significance of setting eyes on the spot where the last legal duel took place between Senator David C. Broderick and Justice David S. Terry in 1859. Terry shot Broderick somewhere beside the now 7th tee, sparking a chain of events that would eventually propel Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. The front nine here is dramatic as the history of the ground, with the holes navigating through and over impressive ridges and two impressively deep valleys, creating some dramatic precipitous drives and eye catching chute fairways. The way the ground is utilised is the real master of the piece, and this is as perfect a nine holes as you could ever wish to play. The back nine is less dramatic but still perfectly formed and as an experience, it will linger in my golfing daydreams for many years. More golf in California was followed by a quick fire trifecta of Welsh golf, at St Pierre (Old), Cradoc and Builth Wells, visiting each for the first time on Top100 duty. St Pierre has hosted some notable professional events in years gone by, and you could feel the course would pose a decent test to the professionals, particularly through the closing stretch. Cradoc, nestled in the lee of Pen Y Fan and the rest of Brecon Beacons is a parkland golf course that ranks high on good vibes, while also boasting plenty of quality. And just down the road in the Wye Valley, Builth Wells bursts with quirk, particularly on the back nine, and I left Wales with my enthusiasm for seeing some of the hidden gems in British golf truly reinvigorated. Pennsylvania was the destination for my final long haul voyage in July. We played at an underrated course named Treesdale on our first day, where Arnold Palmer carved 27 testing holes through the undulating and heavily wooded terrain. The golf and the company were tremendous, but it was difficult not to get ahead of myself, as what lay ahead the following day had been keeping me awake at night for weeks. Henry Fownes left the ultimate architectural mic drop out in the suburbs of Pittsburgh; one world beating layout and he was done. It really is some legacy. Oakmont has been undergoing a renovation under the guidance of Gil Hanse, in preparation for the US Open in 2025, and it was touch and go whether we would be able to make it out for a game, with the works and weather a dangerous duo to navigate. However my luck was in, it had been member/guest weekend which meant the works were minimised, while the storms had rolled off into the distance, leaving us with one of world golf’s finest golf courses almost to ourselves on a sun kissed summer afternoon. My take away from playing Oakmont is that it is even more testing than I had imagined, yet somehow, it is still eminently enjoyable golf, which really explains why it is so highly regarded. It is undoubtedly much harder than most of the elite clubs I have played in the USA. Your strategical nous and execution is heavily tested throughout, the bunkers admonish most of the punishment, but you can make a big score by merely missing the treacherous greens (which are kept close to US Open pace routinely) on the wrong side by a only couple of yards. My July might have been the most varied and far reaching month of golf in my life to date. Three world Top100 courses, 25,000 miles of golf travel on the ground and in the air, and a camera roll of memories (both physical and in my head) to last a life time. August would be no lighter on the air miles, with more trips to the Far East and North America planned. In the mean time, wherever you are reading this and whatever your August has in store, I wish you the straightest of drives, well negotiated four- footers and happy rounds.
Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales Best in State Rankings 2021 On the back of publishing our biennial Australian Top 100 last week, it’s now time to focus our attention on the state listings, which are one level below the national chart. This gives us the benefit of being able to cast the spotlight on many of the layouts that miss out on a place at the country’s top table, but are still worthy of recognition within a smaller geographical area. We begin this exercise in the southeast of Australia with the federal district of the Australian Capital Territory – which is home to the nation’s capital city, Canberra – and the state of New South Wales, within which ACT is enclaved. We feature five of the courses in ACT and we’ve now extended our coverage in NSW to a Top 100, giving us the opportunity to highlight close to a third of the total number of tracks in the most populous state Down Under. Australian Capital Territory The top three positions in the Australian Capital Territory chart remain unaltered, which means the Westbourne course at Royal Canberra is still #1 in our revised table, a position it’s held since we started our state listings for Australia six years ago. Originally laid out by John Harris in the 1960s to a plan devised by James Herd Scott twenty years earlier, the course was extensively remodelled by Ogilvy Clayton Cocking Mead when this company was a design ensemble a few years ago, before Mike Clayton joined forces with Mike DeVries and Frank Pont. OCCM rebuilt greens and bunkers, removed trees and remodelled a number of holes. Royal Canberra Golf Club - Westbourne course This is what a recent reviewer had to say after playing here: “the new renovation brought a modern touch to a classic layout at Royal [by] opening the fairways, as well as adding strategic bunkers and amping up the green complex contours… the renovation solidified RCGC as a course with natural beauty and a classic Australian design, something that is quite unique to the Oceania region.” There is one new entry at #4 and it’s the course at Gungahlin Lakes Golf Club, situated 18 kilometres north of the capital, which is owned and operated by the Ainslie Group, one of Canberra’s leading hospitality companies. Unveiled in 1996, it was co-designed by Ted Parslow and Jamie Dawson of Enviro Links Design, with Dawson returning a decade later to add new bunkers, upgrade tees with stone wall abutments and install new cart paths. Click the link to see full details of our latest ACT Top 5 rankings. New South Wales There’s been quite a shake-up in our New South Wales listings, with most of the action taking place in the bottom half of the new table, where we’ve added another forty courses to create a Top 100. But first, looking at the other end of the chart, there’s very little movement within the first twenty places. Indeed, more than half the courses remain in the same position, including the state #1, New South Wales Golf Club in Botany Bay National Park. New South Wales Golf Club Designed by Alister MacKenzie back in the 1920s and refined down the years by a succession of architects, including Eric Apperly, Peter Thomson and Mike Wolveridge, Greg Norman and Bob Harrison, “La Perouse” (as the course is known locally) has recently benefitted from Tom Doak and his Renaissance Golf Design team reworking a number of the holes, most notably the par three 6th. The following remarks were made in a post a few months back: “the location of La Perouse on the northern cliff-top side of Botany Bay is to Sydney what Pebble is to Carmel, California… New South Wales is right at the top of the surprisingly meagre architecturally significant offerings on the Sydney golf scene. You will not be disappointed by a day spent in its warm embrace.” The most significant upward move near the top of the chart is the two-place advance of Bonnie Doon Golf Club's course at Pagewood to #7. The club is the third oldest in Sydney but its course is a relative youngster, having been created shortly after World War II when a relocation took place due to the expansion of the city airport. The aforementioned design firm of OCCM completed a 4-stage renovation a few years back and the results of this extensive upgrade are now reflected in the course’s upward trajectory in the rankings. Bonnie Doon Golf Club Rising sixteen to #22 (and also a new entry in our national Top 100), the Hilltop course at Mollymook Golf Club is another big climber in our NSW standings. The club was formed in the early 1950s with a 9-hole layout but it decided to fashion a new 18-hole layout within a nearby eucalyptus forest in the 1970s when expansion of its original Beachside course provide impractical. Featuring kikuyu fairways, bent greens, and water on almost half the holes, the Hilltop’s a tidy track that demands respect. Mollymook Golf Club - Hilltop course The course at Killara Golf Club progresses twelve places to #24. Founded at the end of the 19th century, the club moved to its present location just a few years after its formation, becoming what’s believed to be the first in Australia to own its own course in 1906. Englishman John Harris redesigned the layout in the mid-1960s and Harley Kruse has just completed a renovation, rebuilding greens and fairway bunkers, reversing a couple of holes and removing a significant number of trees. Killara Golf Club Another double-digit chart improvement (up ten to #29) is made by the course at Duntryleague Golf Club in Orange, which Eric Apperly and the club’s professional designed back in the 1930s. A Latvian landscape architect was hired shortly after World War II to devise an agronomy masterplan for the club so there are now some wonderful tree species to be found in the grounds of the estate that the course occupies. Duntryleague Golf Club Situated next to the Murray River, Corowa Golf Club (up thirteen to #45) have been in operation since 1903, when it started out as a basic 9-hole set-up with sand scrape putting surfaces. After moving in 1928 to Corowa Common, Al Howard redesigned what had become an 18-hole layout during the mid-1950s and another nine holes were brought into play twenty-five years later. In more recent times, a 35-room motel was added to the list of club amenities but, to top it all, a 58-seat boutique cinema became another of the club’s visitor attractions in 2018. Corowa Golf Club The last big mover of note is the Gangurru course at Riverside Oaks Golf Club, progressing eleven spots to #48. The original layout at an enterprising 36-hole facility, the Gangurru is somewhat overshadowed these days by the new Bob Harrison-designed Bungool course which opened five years ago but a bunker refurbishment carried out around the same time on the Gangurru has reignited thoughts of the glory days when it hosted three editions of the Australian PGA Championship at the end of the 1980s. Gangurru course at Riverside Oaks Golf Club The highest entry made by the many newcomers to our expanded NSW chart is the Captains course at Tocumwal Golf & Bowls Club, which arrives at #40. The club was formed in the 1950s, using former Australian Air Force property to build an initial 9-hole layout. This became the 18-hole Presidents course in the 1970s, before former Australian Amateur champion Kevin Hartley laid out the Captains course in the early 1990s. Click the link to see full details of our latest New South Wales Best in State rankings. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses
As we’ve just revised the Top 100 listings for Australia, it’s now time to drill down further into the state rankings that we first established nine years ago in 2015. This allows us to shine a light on many of the courses that don’t quite make the cut at national level but are still worthy of closer inspection. We start in the southeast of the country with the federal district of the Australian Capital Territory – home to the capital city of Canberra – and the state of New South Wales, within which ACT is enclaved. We feature five tracks in ACT and a hundred in NSW, representing around a quarter of all the golfing layouts in these two regions. Australian Capital Territory It may have dropped three places in the Australian Top 100 to #28 but the Westbourne course at Royal Canberra Golf Club in Yarralumla (pictured above) still remains head and shoulders above all the other ACT golfing layouts, retaining its status as #1 in state. The Ogilvy Clayton Cocking Mead golf architecture firm (as it was then) renovated the Royal Canberra course a few years ago, removing trees and rebuilding greens and bunkers to considerably up the architecture quotient on this early 1960s design. Gold Creek Half an hour’s drive north of Royal Canberra lies the course at Gold Creek Country Club in Nicholls, a mid-1990s Bruce Devlin layout which now makes a significant three-place jump to #2 in the new state standings – and even better, it recently entered the new Australian Top 100 for the first time at #95. Laid out as two returning nines around a substantial residential development, the Gold Creek course boasts couch fairways and bent grass greens, with a slope rating of 132 from the back tees giving an indication of the stern challenge on offer here. New South Wales The top fifteen places in our New South Wales listings stay the same, which means the Alister MacKenzie-designed course at New South Wales Golf Club in Botany Bay National Park (pictured above) remains the #1 track in the state. Quite a few architects have had design input here over the last 100 years but upgrade work that’s just got under way now from Mackenzie & Ebert intends to bring greater consistency across the layout. As a reviewer stated just a few weeks ago: “the previous architecture consultant, Tom Doak, as well as home-grown architects such as Mike Clayton and OCM, all of whom might otherwise have had ideas of their own, will all be watching from afar with a keen but critical eye as to what this UK-based architectural firm will be able to deliver”. Two NSW tracks in the top half of the table make sufficient progress to also make it into the national Top 100. Horizons The first of these is the 18-hole layout at the Horizons Golf Resort in Salamander Bay (up fourteen places to #18 and debuting in the national chart at #82). Unveiled in the early 1990s, this is an entertaining Ross Watson and Graham Marsh collaboration, featuring bent grass greens and holes that are routed around lakes, wetland and bushland areas. Cypress Lakes The second big mover in NSW that also gets into the Australian Top 100 for the first time at #86 is another early 1990s design from Steve Smyers at Cypress Lakes Golf & Country Club in the Hunter Valley wine region (up eighteen to #20 in the NSW chart). The club has prospered on and off the course in recent times from infrastructure investment made by the Oaks Hotels group. Three courses now make incredible advances within the new chart. Coomeala Soaring an amazing thirty-four places up to #48, the course at Coomealla Golf Club lies on the north bank of the Murray river, outside the small town of Dareton. A sports club has operated at Coomeala since 1947, with 10,000 members nowadays able to participate in eight sports other than golf including cycling, angling, bowls and cricket. Brighton Lakes The 18-hole layout at Brighton Lakes Recreation & Golf Club outside Sydney progresses at an even greater pace in the NSW table, rising forty-one spots to #58. The club can trace its origins back almost a hundred years but it relocated to its current site on the flood plain of the Georges River in 1950. Since 1979, Bob Harrison has twice redesigned the course due to road works and a residential development. Carnarvon The third massive mover is the course at Carnarvon Golf Club in Lidcombe, hurtling thirty-five places up to #60 in the state listings. The club was founded in 1927 but moved to its current location just after World War II, when Arthur East set out a new 18-hole layout on a property of no more than 110 acres. Today, the tree-lined holes offer a lovely walk in the park across mildly undulating terrain, punctuated by the occasional water hazard, where Kikuyu fairways lead to well-maintained, reasonably contoured Poa grass greens. Dubbo The highest of six new entries arrives at #55 and it’s holes 1-18 (comprising the Delroy course) at Dubbo Golf Club’s 27-hole golf complex which lies close to the meandering Macquarie River, with Golf Links Creek running through the property. With so much water around, it’s hardly a surprise to learn there’s an aquatic theme to the playing strategy at several holes on the back nine. Postscript The other five newcomers to the NSW listings are Howlong [at #77], Mudgee [at #82], Blackheath [at #86], Strathfield [at #89] and Barham [at #100]. The six courses that drop out to become non-ranked GEMs are The Springs [from #84], Roseville [from #85], The Ridge [from #87], Highlands [from #97], Wagga Wagga [from #98] and Bondi Golf & Diggers [from #100]. View the Australian Capital Territory ranking here View the New South Wales ranking here If you have any comment to make on the above article then please use the “WRITE A RESPONSE” link at the bottom of this page. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses
The latest ranking of the Top 100 Golf Courses in the World serves as the ultimate global golf bucket list. Most members of our World Top 100 Panel are seasoned golfers, each playing 20-30 of these courses annually while travelling extensively over decades to form their opinions on others. We recognise that opinions vary—even among our panel members. Rankings are subjective, and there are undoubtedly 50 or more courses in the UK and USA alone that could easily fit onto this list. Links Golf Pilgrimages The rankings
New York, United States
Massachusetts, United States
New South Wales, Australia
Shizuoka, Japan
Scotland, United Kingdom
