City Golf Club in Toowoomba is set to sparkle when the revived Australian Senior Open heads there this October.
Whenever Nigel Weldon sees Ryan Fox bludgeon another tee shot 300-plus yards on the PGA Tour, he is reminded.
Reminded of seeing the Fox ferocity in person at his beloved City Golf Club in Toowoomba early in the Kiwi’s ascension to the elite tier of professional golf. Fox’s finish to the 2015 Queensland PGA Championship is the stuff of legend around “City”.
Breaking through for his first pro win at the WA Open in October 2014, Fox stormed to a second win in February 2015 thanks to consecutive eagles at the par-4 16th and par-5 17th holes in the final round to pip Matthew Millar and a promising Queensland amateur named Cameron Smith by one stroke.
The eagle at 16 sits deep in Weldon’s subconscious. Standing behind the tee as Fox exploded a tee shot over trees that had stood sentinel for almost 90 years, Weldon was left gobsmacked when Fox’s ball landed on the green some 350 metres away.
“I had to see it to believe it, mate, I tell you,” says Weldon, a 14-time club champion at City and currently the 2IC on the club’s greens staff under course superintendent Shane Chalmers. “I can be watching golf on the weekend and the commentators are like, ‘He’s a powerful man.’ And I’m like, He’s got no idea. He’s an animal. I’ve obviously played that hole countless times, but to go over the trees for me isn’t even an option.”
It is an epic chapter in a proud tournament history for a regional club that has hosted some of the best golfers Australia – and New Zealand – has ever produced since it was formed 100 years ago. In the 1980s, the likes of Greg Norman, Ian Baker-Finch and Bob Shearer teed it up in the Datsun Open at City. In more recent years, City was home to the Queensland PGA for more than a decade, and this October some of those names from the ’80s will return for the first Australian Senior Open since Peter Fowler won at Royal Perth Golf Club in 2012.
When they do return to tee it up from October 2-4, players will see a club that has grown exponentially and has already begun the process to become even bigger and better.
GROWING GAINS
City Golf Club, for those who are yet to visit, is far beyond a gathering spot for avid golfers. It is a dining and entertainment centrepiece for a Greater Toowoomba region boasting a population of more than 180,000. Its size and scale are more akin to a large RSL club, its financial strength allowing the club to keep membership fees at a level the envy of any club with a golf course of such a high standard.
It is almost a decade since the club broadened its footprint to introduce the Slice Café and Mini Golf, and work is now underway on a $16 million extension that will incorporate a brand-new, state-of-the-art gaming room along with a new pro shop more befitting the golf experience at City.
The current shop used to look across the 18th green but has since been enveloped by the ongoing expansion of the club. PGA professionals Matt and Chris Britnell are excited at the opportunity to serve members and visitors from a more modern retail shop with greater accessibility. Expected to be completed in April 2027, the works will also include a new function room that will further entrench City Golf Club as the social centre of the Darling Downs.
TWISTS AND TURNS, UPS AND DOWNS
Pop into the halfway house as you make the turn and you are struck by an honour roll of past winners that would rival any regional course in the country. During its reign as host of the Queensland PGA from 2009-2020, City crowned champions in Steven Bowditch (2009) and Ryan Fox (2015) who would go on to record wins on the PGA Tour.
Brad Kennedy would win three times on the Japan Golf Tour either side of his victory at City in 2013, while Michael Sim had risen to be a top 50 player in the world prior to his win over good friend Scott Arnold in the last Queensland PGA held at City just before the world went into the COVID-19 lockdown.
“To have them come and play the course, world-class players that have played it – and you can see how they handle it,” Weldon says of the impact hosting major events has on the membership. “It can be chewed up when they’re really on, but other days it gets them.
“It’s not something that happens every day. We had 10 or 11 years of success with the PGA, and it really put us on the map as a stay-and-play destination. The club has its own City Golf Club Motel for stay-and-play packages and we get a lot of visitors from the coast and Brisbane now who come out and enjoy our course.”
It’s hard not to. At 6,452 metres and par 70, it is by no means monstrous, instead leaning on the curvature of the fairways and elevation changes to challenge shot-making. Finding fairways off the tee is paramount – chip-outs from the trees add up quickly – and there is rarely a second shot that doesn’t demand adjustments for both shape and carry.
The first hole sets the tone perfectly. Lining the club’s eastern boundary, the fairway doglegs hard to the right, opening up to a mid-iron second shot that plays significantly downhill and across West Creek that splits the layout. If you haven’t dialled in your distances before teeing off, you’re about to know it.
The second is a par 3 of 160 metres that plays uphill and then it is a gentle turn to the left and downhill at the par-4 third, the length of your second dependent on how brave you want to be in driving down for a second crossing of West Creek. Befitting a golf course that sits within the “Garden City”, flora is a feature around tees and behind greens more so than most courses you will play, the setting for the 130-metre, par-3 eighth as close as many will get to something resembling the iconic 12th hole at Augusta National.
The course weaves its way to the high point at its northern side and then closes with a four-hole stretch that rivals any roller-coaster for its rises and falls, culminating with the spectacular tee shot at the par-4 18th.
Yet for all its twists and turns, it is the putting surfaces that serve as City’s greatest form of defence. Large by regional-course standards, the bentgrass greens don’t rely on dramatic slopes but more a steady camber and pure roll that makes any putt from above the hole fraught with the thought of the dreaded six-foot come-backer.
“When I’ve had my best rounds, I’ve driven it reasonably well, but the highlight has always been wedges and putting,” adds Weldon, whose low round at City is nine-under 62 when the course was a par 71. “If you can get those putts rolling in and get up and down… because you do get tested a lot if you miss a green. You don’t have too many standard little chip-and-runs unless you’re right on the edge of the green.”
Having played on the PGA Legends Tour for the past three years, Weldon knows the quality of golfers coming to City in October. When the club hosted the Wippell’s Auto City Legends Pro-Am last August, Weldon finished seven shots behind joint winners Chris Taylor and Brad Burns, who shot five-under for two rounds. With the likes of Peter Lonard, Peter Senior, Jason Norris, Brendan Jones, Andre Stolz, John Senden and Brad Kennedy all a chance of teeing it up at the Australian Senior Open, Weldon knows home-course advantage will get him only so far.
“They’re quick learners, these fellows,” says Weldon, a winner of Legends Tour events in Moree and Beerwah. “They might play a course for the first time, and it might have their number, but I guarantee you the next year they come back, they’re a lot more savvy for it. They’re so good like that.”
THE DETAILS
City Golf Club
Where: South St, Toowoomba, QLD 4350
Phone: (07) 4636 9000
Web: citygolf.com.au
