The members at Maroochy River Golf Club are beginning to feel like they’ll be able to fall in love again.
But the journey hasn’t been easy.
Their previous relationship with a golf club was a long and fruitful one, with many happy memories at Horton Park held dear by many before they were effectively dumped in favour of a new retail hub for Maroochydore.
A protracted negotiation which, at one point, raised the prospect of Horton Park members being shipped across to nearby Twin Waters was finally resolved in 2011 when the club received $42 million from Sunshine Coast City Council for their land but members didn’t move to their new facility until May last year.
The shift wasn’t without an element of regret as members believed the club should have fought harder to keep the romance alive. Thus, moving across to a brand new facility carefully crafted by Graham Marsh has been something of a get-to-know-you process.
“It’s sad to see it go; there aren’t too many people here that were happy to see it go and there aren’t too many people who really want to go there (Bli Bli),” club general manager and 32-year member Charlie McGill told the Sunshine Coast Daily.
“It’s the cards we’ve been dealt and unfortunately it’s just the way it is.”
Initial experiences on the vastly different Maroochy River layout were clouded by the bitterness of having to leave Horton Park behind; only those who had 40-plus points spoke glowingly. But with the one-year anniversary fast approaching, members are warming to their new love and in six hours at the course on a Saturday morning it was evident this golf club has a bright future.
Although Marsh tells Australian Golf Digest Maroochy River can never be considered a ‘true links course’, the complete absence of trees allows you to see every one of the 18 holes from almost any point on the golf course.
During play, all one can see around them is other golfers enjoying their round, not to mention dozens of kids at a clinic run by Di Pavich at the club’s state-of-the-art practice facilities. It gives the entire facility an energy that would be the envy of a large number of Australian golf clubs. It also allows interaction with fellow members on the course.
Not everything that was said by my playing partners Trevor, Athol and Noel is fit for publication, but it was all in good fun and evidence the spirit Horton Park possessed is slowly transferring to its new Bli Bli setting.
“It was all about giving the members a golf course they can play and the numbers they are putting through since it opened are almost hysterical,” says Marsh. “They can’t keep them off the course!
“They’ve since signed 3,000 social members; people who had never even thought about being a member of a golf club before.
“They’re the things for me that make our design industry successful; producing something that people want, not what I want.
“They didn’t want to be going to a place that was going to be totally driven by an architect’s ego that was going to make this place way beyond the capacity of what the members were capable of playing. That was always in our mind.”
A New Attraction
When we teed off at 6.51am on a perfectly still Sunshine Coast morning, Trev, Athol and Noel made it abundantly clear this was as good as conditions could get.
When I enquired to the proportion of rounds played in strong winds the overwhelming response was around the 90 per cent mark, which has the ability to turn 120-metre par 3s into devilish pieces of architectural genius.
One of the rare recent additions to Australian golf, Maroochy River’s par-3 fourth embodies fun and challenge. At its longest, the fourth plays 130 metres directly towards picturesque Mount Coolum. Playing off the blue markers 10m closer to the green and with the wind only just starting to gain some traction, I had to think long and hard before convincing myself I needed to hit 8-iron, and I still came up well short. It’s the type of golf hole that if it was placed on the edge of a coastline would be hailed as one of the great par 3s of the world. Yet at Bli Bli it may register with only a handful of purists who appreciate its beauty.
Indeed for Marsh, it is the shorter holes – the sixth is a par 4 of 305m and the 15th measures just 292m – that will define the character of Maroochy River as it continues to mature.
“It was a blank canvas but probably one of the worst looking sites I’ve ever worked on in my life,” says Marsh. “All you could see was cane field and nothing; an absolutely featureless site in a past life.
“The selection of par 3s are all different and they’re all challenging.”
One of the holes that creates the most interest is the bunkerless 18th. It has one waterway in front of the green by necessity, but the 18th has the largest green on the golf course. The putting surface is magnificent – a rolling green complex which had to be large enough to give golfers a chance to get over the water.
“You want women to be able to hit a fairway wood over the water and keep it on the green,” says Marsh. “The golf course for me will be driven by the subtlety of the landscaping and the general development as it starts to grow.”
Because Maroochy River is so open, it is incredibly vulnerable to high winds. And while it will never fit into the category of pure links golf, the club has decided it wants to remain tree-less in order to take in the sweeping vistas of the property, while speeding up play.
“Looking across that site in the early morning and in the afternoon, it does give off a strong feeling of a links golf course,” says Marsh. “But there is an openness about it that has a charm with Mount Coolum in the background.”
The Details
Maroochy River Golf Club
Bli Bli, Queensland
Par 72, 6,441m
