On Par – All about golf in Australia

The latest edition of Australian Golf Digest arrived in my mailbox this week, and there were no surprises to learn that Kingston Heath had indeed knocked off Royal Melbourne for top spot in the Top 100 courses in Australia. Kingston Heath narrowly beat New South Wales Golf Club, with Royal Melbourne West, Barnbougle and Ellerston rounding out the Top 5.

Kingston Heath – Australia’s new number one course

The Top 100 listing is always going to be subjective but provides a strong comparison of the best courses in the country and generally is pretty spot on. A couple of issues that the list raises:

To Composite or not to composite
This year AGD ranked Royal Melbourne seperately rather than as the composite course. This is the way it should do, as for 99.9% of the time it has two courses – the East and West. Only during professional tournaments, and a charity event once a year does the composite course exist.

Out of bounds
Ellerston is ranked at number five in the country, a fine course it must be, but who would know. The private Packer course is one of the most exclusive courses in the country, typically 6 people play the layout per week. Should it be in the list of best courses if no-one can play it?
Conditioning v Layout
One of the reasons that Royal Melbourne suffered was its conditioning, the drought has taken a toll on the course much more so than other sandbelt clubs. The AGD rankings however weight ‘shot value’ twice as important as design variety, memorability and conditioning. So an excellent layout testing accuracy and finesse that loses condition, will still rank higher than an ordinary layout that is brilliantly conditioned. Hence Laguna Whitsunday is still in the top 100. Laguna is in a sad state at the moment, and has fallen 32 spots to 53rd. But is this still too generous, it is still an excellent layout, but I would not go back until its had a lot of TLC!

Access
Australia is lucky to have public access to many of its top golf courses, such as #4 ranked Barnbougle Dunes which also ranks in the Top 100 in the World. Its also good to see St Andrews Beach on the Mornington Peninsula ranked at #32. For a while there it looked as though this links layout would cease to exist but thankfully its back and is open to the public.

Victoria is the place to be
With more than half of the top 40 courses in Victoria (21), 10 of the Top 100 in the sandbelt and a further 9 on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria has again proven its place as Australia’s golfing Mecca.

For the record
I’m lucky enough to have played 49 of the Top 100 courses in the country including the 6 of the top 10. Having played Kingston Heath late last year, I completely agree with the top ranking.