Peninsula Kingswood (South)

The Peninsula Country Golf Club is located half way down the Mornington Peninsula, the arched finger of land that begins in Melbourne and sweeps down to the windy promontories of Cape Schank to the southeast and Portsea to the north and west. The lands between Frankston and Portsea are rich golfing lands, somewhat akin to the northeast of Scotland in the way in which each small town seems to have its own golf course. It would take a better part of a very happy month to play them all. Tucked in behind the courses are the various wineries of the Mornington Peninsula ideal growing lands for cool climate grapes.

Although most of the courses on the Peninsula are set back from the shoreline, all have the tang of the sea being sand based. The two courses at Peninsula share kin relations with their older cousins near Melbourne by virtue of being sand based and in the manner in which the holes circulate through native bush. And although decades of careful ministering of the last remaining bush of Sandringham, Black Rock Oakleigh has provided a delightful backdrop to the holes you are frequently reminded that you are playing in the middle of suburbs. Woodlands and Commonwealth are better shielded but even at grand old Royal Melbourne you find yourself taking aim on somebody’s bedroom window, or get distracted by the rumble of a car backing out of a driveway behind a green.

Peninsula has made the most of being that little bit further out of town although its neighbouring town Frankston is a vibrantly commercial centre. Fortunately the courses are laid out someway from the town and at a little elevation so the sea can be spotted from a few points on the courses over the treetops. The atmosphere is fresh and rustic.

The above passage is a brief edited extract from The Finest Golf Courses of Asia and Australasia by James Spence. Reproduced with kind permission.

In September 2013, Peninsula Country Golf Club and Kingswood Golf Club officially merged together, the first amalgamation of two golf clubs in Australia, providing a new platform for a top class club with excellent facilities. The club operated out of both the Frankston and Dingley locations until the end of 2017 before fully relocating to Frankston.

Following the merger, both the North and South courses at Peninsula KIngswood were renovated by the design company of Ogilvy Clayton Cocking Mead. Both courses fully reopened in August 2019.