Ocean Shores

Ocean Shores Country Club started out as a real estate development at Brunswick Heads in the late 1960s. One of the world’s largest development companies, Wendell West of Seattle, paid $1 million for the land and planned to spend another $100 million on the property, attracting investors like American singer Pat Boone (who lost a lot of money in the project).

The intention was to make the 3,700-acre property a “community resort” with 22,000 inhabitants but, more than fifty years later, only around a quarter of that number of people reside in the area. Robert von Hagge and Bruce Devlin designed the 18-hole layout in the early 1970s, setting out the course with six par threes, six par fours and six par fives (arranged so that the same par is never played consecutively during the round).

Laid out between Marshalls Creek and the Brunswick River, the course is configured as two returning nines, each of which drop down from the clubhouse to lower lying terrain before returning to higher ground again at the 9th and 18th. The relatively open front nine weaves around several attractive water hazards, with the more tree-lined back nine a significantly longer (and tougher) proposition.