From The Lakes Golf Club to the sprawling greater west, the Australian PGA Championship provides the perfect starting point for discovering a city that rewards golfers who venture beyond its tourist centre.
Sydney is a city divided. Quite literally. The majestic harbour that is the forefront of every tourism campaign also splices the city into two distinct halves. Yet I would argue it’s even more segmented than that. Sydney in 2026 is a city of melded parts, a trait that’s also evident in its golf courses. The coastal layouts in the eastern and northern suburbs bear little resemblance to the more bushland courses of the west, yet to many they’re all viewed under the same banner.
So as the Australian PGA Championship makes its way back to the Harbour City for the first time since 1998, we’ve unpacked broader Sydney’s golf scene into the various segments that come together to make the whole. Whether you explore just one or all of them, you’re sure to encounter an experience that’s quintessentially Sydney.
COASTAL GEMS
Clifftop golf courses are usually the domain of out-of-town locations, yet Sydney is home to several – and right along the city’s coastline. In the north, Long Reef Golf Club sits on its own headland overlooking the Pacific Ocean in a links-like excursion that reaches its crescendo at the lofty 16th tee and continues when the beach is your companion as you play the 17th hole. It’s a similar situation a few kilometres up the road, where the closing holes at Mona Vale Golf Club touch the beach.
In the east, Bondi Golf & Diggers Club is so close to the sea that you could tumble into it if you’re not careful. The Coast Golf Club offers similar moments during its dalliances with the wide blue yonder, as do the adjoining St Michael’s Golf Club and Randwick Golf Club. Of course, the granddaddy of them all is regal New South Wales Golf Club, which has never looked better since its renovation at the hands of British course architects Mackenzie & Ebert. Seven coastal golf courses in one city – and all but one publicly accessible – is certainly punching above its weight.
HARBOUR HEROES
The ocean courses might steal the show, but the harbour is also home to a few of Sydney’s unheralded layouts. Massey Park Golf Club and nearby Barnwell Park Golf Club provide the closest touchpoints, with the water in play on a few holes in what are mostly gentle tests along that part of the harbour that is technically the Parramatta River. Perhaps the best harbour backdrop is found at Northbridge Golf Club, where the sharply downhill, par-3 fifth hole plummets towards a green framed by Sailors Bay to the rear.
CITY SIGHTS
Great cities feature great green spaces amid the concrete jungle, and while Moore Park Golf Course might be the subject of sustained political pressure, it remains a fixture within the CBD. Located just south of the city proper, for more than a century Moore Park has offered city dwellers and those in the immediate south and east a place to
play that didn’t necessarily require a car trip. Whatever becomes of the beleaguered layout (the latest model is a 12-hole incarnation), its soul will endure longer than any politician’s career can.
One of the reasons why Moore Park is so important within the landscape of Sydney golf is that the next closest 18-hole public layout is Eastlake Golf Club, located near the city’s main airport (Western Sydney International opened in late October). Sydney’s golf courses often appear in clusters and Eastlake is no different, bordering the private layouts of Bonnie Doon on one side and The Lakes on the other. It flows across a slender tract of land where the ninth green is the furthest point from the clubhouse in a true out-and-back affair.
GOING BUSH
For all its urbanity, Sydney possesses a lot of bushland that infiltrates the suburbs. The fringes are naturally the most obvious examples, especially in the north-west, where despite rapid expansion in recent years, the top-left corner of the city has retained some of its semi-rural feel. That’s definitely evident at Riverside Oaks Golf Club, formerly a home of the Australian PGA Championship. The only 36-hole facility in Sydney turns 40 this year and is continuing to revive the rest of its flood-hit Bungool course, which has been operating as only nine holes for the past few years since flooding in 2021 and 2022 ravaged the Bob Harrison-designed layout. The Gangurru course happily persists, though, giving golfers a genuine bushland playing experience.
The best public course in the north-west is Stonecutters Ridge Golf Club, home since 2012 of the former Ashlar Golf Club at Blacktown. Characterised by striking bunkering schemes and nines rolled out across differing terrain, the 12th to 17th holes retain a bushland feel despite the course being part of a large residential estate. While in this neck of the woods, don’t overlook Richmond Golf Club, home to the Australian PGA Seniors Championship each November.
DEEP SOUTH
Cronulla and the Sutherland Shire occupy something of a mythical existence to those who don’t live in Sydney’s southern outskirts, but locals love the fact it feels connected to the rest of the city yet distant at the same time. And that’s before you mention the magnificent surf beaches of Cronulla.
Golf-wise, Cronulla Golf Club is front and centre, although the flat, compact site doesn’t yield many thrilling moments but is a solid if unspectacular layout. Nearby Woolooware Golf Club is a little more beguiling and was once a stop on the PGA Tour of Australasia, hosting the Toyota Southern Classic from the late 1990s to early 2000s. Since then, however, a newcomer has emerged. The Ridge Golf Course opened in 2009 with the full 18 holes playable from 2013 as golfers enjoyed a semi-bushland site that is part of a broader sporting complex. The layout is exposed to any breezes rifling across its many undulations in what is arguably the most interesting golf course in the region.
GROWING PLAINS
The part of Greater Sydney with the most room to move in recent years is the ever-expanding south-west – and the golf courses have followed. Established layouts like Lakeside Golf Club Camden and Campbelltown Golf Club were joined around the turn of the millennium by Macquarie Links Golf Club and Macarthur Grange Golf Club. Yet as the city’s limits stretched, the region grew to almost touch venues like Antill Park Golf Club near the quaint town of Picton and the newer Bingara Gorge Golf Course at Wilton, which Golf NSW acquired earlier this year.
Next up for the south-west is a fresh look for Oak Point Golf Club, which was formerly known as Liverpool Golf Club before it merged with the now-defunct Kogarah club. The amalgamation has helped fund a three-year renovation of the clubhouse and the par-72 golf course along the Georges River. And if you’re exploring this part of town, don’t miss Brighton Lakes Recreation & Golf Club with its testing holes threaded along the banks of the same waterway.
Photography by gary lisbon, istock/barol16
