Waverley Golf Club

If you had Googled Waverley Golf Club when we first built this webpage in 2014, the search results would have returned next to no information whatsoever. It was easy to find details about its namesake in Victoria, Australia, but there was literally nothing online for this Kiwi course. This unassuming club flew well under the radar back then – it had no website and even local Taranaki golfers seemed oblivious to its charms.

The Taranaki region of New Zealand’s North Island is dominated by Mount Taranaki, one of the most symmetrical volcanic cones in the world. There’s more than enough information available online about this active volcano but as far as Waverley Golf Club is concerned, you’ll be hard pressed to even find a scorecard.

In a similar vein to England’s Kington and Royal North Devon, sheep cut the fairways at Waverley and consequently you’ll find less than perfect manicuring. If you don’t fancy dirty golf shoes then give this undulating 5,537-metre track a wide berth, but if you want to play some extraordinary golf holes, stop the car, put a few bucks in the honesty box, and prepare for a thrilling round.

Waverley was first brought to our attention when one of our most respected Kiwi contributors submitted a return for our New Zealand Top 50 re-rankings, which placed Waverley in the top 2.5% of all New Zealand’s golf courses. Since then we’ve been following in the footsteps of Tom Doak.

When Doak’s team was working on Tara Iti, some of his intrepid crew travelled around the North Island playing undiscovered courses. In an interview for Stuff Magazine, the Renaissance architect commented as follows:

“The little country course that my associates fell in love with was Waverley, it's just $10 or $15 and it's quite a place.

It's in rough shape but I could see what excited them. It's a really rugged piece of land and there's some really cool holes, four or five of them, and I've never seen anything like them before.

When we showed up to play there was no-one on duty and there was an honesty box to pay. Next to it was a sign about not wearing shoes in the clubhouse which I thought was a bit frou-frou for a place like that.

Then we got out on the course and saw all the sheep dung about and thought 'I get it now'.”

Tom Doak awarded Waverley a six rating (a very good course, definitely worth a game if you're in town) on his “Doak Scale” in Volume 5 of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses ... "the terrain for golf is superb and holes like the par-5 opener running along the edge of high ground, the short par-4 12th with its tiny green in a valley, the wild back-to-back par-5's at 14 and 15, and the short 16th over a dip to a green tucked in between sharp dunes, are among the best golf to be found in New Zealand."

We hope many adventurous golfers will tee it up here among the sheep. If you’ve played Waverley, why not share your thoughts?