New South Wales Golf Club has announced the appointment of United Kingdom-based golf course architects Mackenzie & Ebert to produce a masterplan for the improvement of its renowned course.

The famed Sydney club was impressed by the firm’s initial response to the brief, which had been developed with input from the membership, and felt Tom Mackenzie and Martin Ebert were the right fit to help them maximise the potential of the exceptional property on which the course is located.

“Mackenzie & Ebert have a well-established reputation for successfully and sympathetically upgrading courses of all types, particularly windy seaside courses like ours, and including the likes of Turnberry, Royal Portrush, Royal Dornoch and Royal St Georges,” said club president Chris Coudounaris.

Speaking on behalf of the firm, Mackenzie said: “Having travelled to Australia to meet with and present to the club’s board in August, we are enormously excited to be appointed to work with New South Wales Golf Club on the renovation of their course.

“It is an incredible property and the course is already very highly regarded, but there is so much opportunity for improvement. Our shared priorities, in accordance with the brief, are to make the course even more interesting, fairer and playable for the members and, at the same time, more varied, strategic and challenging for the best players. The overall intention is to produce a course which remains demanding, but which is also enjoyable to play in all conditions.

“This is an amazing opportunity for Mackenzie & Ebert to work in Australia for the first time, especially on another world-renowned golf course.”

The course at New South Wales Golf Club dates back to 1926 when Alister MacKenzie visited and was commissioned to lay out the holes on land that he likened to Cypress Point, the California course he had just designed and was under construction at the time.

Some of the original layout at New South Wales Golf Club was required to change as a result of land loss during World War II. Since then, different aspects of the course have been rebuilt by various course architects, leaving – from a purist’s point of view – an inconsistent architectural theme across the course. Besides improvement to the strategy, playability and aesthetics, the focal point of the renovation is to have all 18 green complexes designed together, and built in one summer.

Tom Mackenzie and Martin Ebert will visit New South Wales Golf Club in the coming months to progress the masterplan and, subject to member approval, it is anticipated that the renovation will take place in the summer of 2024-2025.