The concurrent course renovations at Royal Sydney and New South Wales golf clubs have provided renewed spark to the Sydney golf scene
Two of Sydney’s most revered golf courses are back in action after extensive redesign work.
Royal Sydney’s main layout – now known as the Bay course – welcomed member play for the first time in more than a year in late March, while the much-cherished New South Wales course re-opened earlier that month. Both renovation efforts received high praise upon their return.
Royal Sydney’s drawn-out and at times controversial (for those outside golf, at least) Gil Hanse redesign will feel like the more radical transformation of the two. However, many of the subtleties of Mackenzie & Ebert’s re-do at NSW will reveal themselves over time, as some of the finishing touches are still to come.
Hanse’s reworking of Royal Sydney took nearly a decade from concept to fruition, thanks in part to a three-year pause from 2019 to 2022 for a NSW Land and Environmental Court ruling to allow the project to proceed. It was worth the wait. The renamed Bay course – a nod to the club’s location at Rose Bay – is a wide open playing experience where vistas across the site are no longer clogged by the parkland-style rows of trees that were a hallmark of the previous iteration.
The artful contours, dramatic bunkering and new sandy waste areas are the design highlights, while the course features new Pure Distinction bentgrass greens that tie-in beautifully with the Santa Ana couchgrass across the remaining surfaces. Somewhat like famed Augusta National, the state-of-the-art infrastructure underground is never seen by golfers yet is equally impressive.
“It’s hard to believe we are finally here and that we have achieved what we have,” Royal Sydney course superintendent Adam Marchant told the Australian Sports Turf Managers Association’s “The Cut” newsletter. “This time last year we only had two fairways grassed, no greens seeded and the place was a bombsite!
“I knew it was going to be good and that Gil’s design would stand up, but to see the amount of infrastructure in the ground and the scale of works that have gone on, I think the members will be blown away with the finished product.”
Further south at La Perouse, Tom Mackenzie and Martin Ebert’s quick-turnaround work at NSW (the course closed for only six months) yielded eye-catching results. The pair reworked some of the course’s problem areas – the early holes in particular – and reduced the height of the prominent ridge that created blind shots on the par-5 eighth and 12th. They even had the courage to tinker with the iconic sixth hole, which now features an immense, 65-metre-long green set at an oblique angle to the line of play. The ocean backdrop to holes like the 13th and 16th is accentuated, while a quaint stone wall now separates the final fairway from the practice area.
Still to come are earthworks to the ridge on the fifth fairway and another crest short of the ninth green. These were held back from the original plan to conserve water and are scheduled for next summer.
A sad footnote for Sydney golf occurred at the same time. Just as Royal Sydney was re-opening, 97-year-old Kogarah Golf Club closed its doors at the end of March. The club sold its 18.5-hectare parcel of land at Arncliffe to John Boyd Properties, which intends to pursue a commercial development. Kogarah is amalgamating with Liverpool Golf Club to become Oak Point Golf Club.
Photographs: royal sydney: brett robinson; NSW: SCOTT WARREN/X
