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].
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Jim McCann
Editor
Top 100 Golf Courses
