When I first played Mount Lawley Golf Club six years ago, I’ll confess that I didn’t think it was anything better than a good layout. Maybe a solid 7-out-of-10 course that was deserving of its place in the middle realms of our biennial Top 100 Golf Courses ranking.
Two years ago when I returned, the club was part-way through its renovation at the hands of OCM Golf and even though only sections of the work were complete, it was clear the vaunted architectural firm was drawing the best attributes out of the site and injecting character into the green complexes.
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The course re-opened in March and yesterday’s first round of the 101st WA Open further revealed the true spirit of a course where its full potential lay dormant for far too long. No more, thankfully.
I hadn’t been on-site for more an hour before texting Mike Cocking – the ‘C’ in OCM Golf – to congratulate him and colleagues Geoff Ogilvy and Ashley Mead on a job well done. I saw enough in the way the players were tackling the golf course during that 60-minute period to know they’d hit all the right notes with their renovation.
“We came up with a unique construction technique to mimic Sandbelt [bunker] edges, which has worked brilliantly,” Cocking replied.
Indeed, tournament drawcard Marc Leishman noted earlier in the week how there were Sandbelt-like qualities to the course. No doubt, the bunkering showcases it best. With such intimate knowledge of the famed stretch of courses in Melbourne, it was a logical approach for OCM to take on land that shares similar traits.
“That was as Sandbelt as I’ve ever seen,” Leishman said after his second round. “That was rock-hard, it was difficult, but it was awesome. It’s so much fun to have to work shots in left-to-right, right-to-left or land them on a hill to get them [close] to a pin. I love that sort of golf.”
On a breezy but otherwise perfect first day, some players unlocked the secret to Mount Lawley while others are still looking for the key. One player, who shall remain nameless, hit three consecutive bunker shots from two different greenside bunkers at the second hole before promptly ‘tomahawking’ his lob wedge at least 40 metres into the trees. The hole is called “Clooties Elbow”, a term stemming from a Gaelic word for the devil, which felt rather appropriate in the moment.
Two holes on, at the famous ‘Commonwealth’ green that’s shaped like Australia – replete with a grassy island in the front-right bunker to represent Tasmania – a trio of golfers all three-putted because they missed the nuance in the green. The first-day flag was positioned somewhere near the Western Australia–Northern Territory border, if you will, which meant hitting the green ‘in WA’ left the most straightforward putt. These gents, however, erred right and struggled to negotiate the subtle spine that is a feature of the putting surface.
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Several more testing pin positions – which will become apparent this weekend – will be the course’s defence. It’s a long enough golf course for your average membership, but hardly lengthy for a field comprising mostly tour professionals. Irons off par-4 tees were in healthy supply during the opening round, although holes like the short par-4 first can tempt players to use the big stick when perhaps they shouldn’t.
Leishman noted on Wednesday that it’s the kind of course where he could envisage someone shooting 62, yet he also said he would not be surprised if a score closer to 68 was the mark. He was eerily prophetic, as 68s led the way for most of the first day until Haydn Barron’s storming finished raised (or lowered) the bar to 65.
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There’s a rising female tour player in this WA Open field, along with Leishman and a solid smattering of Australia’s best golfers in action, yet you get the feeling the golf course will emerge as the star come Sunday night. Mount Lawley has re-entered the conversation as a contender for the best golf course in WA (it will return to our Top 100 next year after being deliberately omitted from the current list due to the redesign work), which is a welcome result for a club that took the always-uneasy decision to rip up its prized asset in the hope of making it better.
We focus so much on Melbourne’s elite Sandbelt courses, but it’s worth noting that Perth, Adelaide and Sydney each have pockets of similar golf land. In this era of course renovation rather than new builds, it’s great for the game in Australia that the best is being brought out of these exceptional sites.
