BRISBANE comes into its own as the weather cools down and the footy season warms up. If you’re in town chasing sunshine or oval-shaped leather balls, make sure you take the golf clubs for a walk on at least one of these fine courses.

Brisbane Golf Club

Hosting the Queensland Open last October was due reward for a club that for so long lived in the shadow of mighty Royal Queensland. Think about it: every state in Australia has a ‘Royal’ club carrying the name of the capital city except Brisbane. In the Sunshine State, that honour instead went cross-town to RQ.

The third-oldest club in Queensland, Brisbane Golf Club famously shunned a Dr Alister MacKenzie plan put forward for the Yeerongpilly layout by the great course architect during his highly influential Australian visit in 1926. Far more recently, it was prolific designer Ross Watson who helped lift Brisbane up the rankings. He was instructed not to alter Carnegie Clark’s original layout so instead focused on the bunkering and bringing the most out of the topography.

The 2011 floods damaged all but two holes at Brisbane, as more than three weeks passed before the course reopened. Yet it was the next year that arguably the most astute agronomy change took place. The club switched its greens to Champion Ultradwarf Bermuda grass – a first in Australia and a far smoother surface for a warm climate.

The 6,105-metre test is supreme, as only 10 players at the Queensland Open bettered par for the week with six of them just a stroke in the red.

Brisbane Golf Club
(07) 3848 1008
brisbanegolfclub.com.au

Indooroopilly Golf Club

Blessed with two golf courses and one of the most appealing pieces of land in the city, Indooroopilly is the envy of all Brisbane golfers.

Almost ringed by the Brisbane River, the club’s 36 holes can be mixed and matched into six different combinations of 18 with visitors enjoying access six days a week. The place today is in tiptop shape after a tumultuous period late last decade and early in this one. Redesign work, mostly on the West course to add to the club’s water storage ironically flowed into a more devastating incident involving huge volumes of water.

Indooroopilly Golf Club

The Brisbane floods of 2011 all but swamped the golf course, which lay vulnerable given its peninsular setting at an elbow in the river. It’s remarkable to think that Long Pocket, the piece of land Indooroopilly calls home, was almost entirely underwater and impacted more than half the holes. The tidy-up was long and laborious but is now firmly in the club’s past.

The West course captures most complements and is viewed as the premier combination (comprising the Gold and Red loops), although any mixture of the nines is likely to agree with the travelling golfer.

Indooroopilly Golf Club
(07) 3721 2121
indooroopillygolf.com.au

McLeod Country Golf Club

A titan in the city’s west, McLeod Country Golf Club is named after Gertrude McLeod, a past president of both the Queensland and Australian Ladies Golf Unions. It is notable for being administered entirely by women (although male golfers are welcome) and the term “members” is reserved for the ladies with their male counterparts referred to as “fellows”.

McLeod Country Golf Club

The Mount Ommaney club refers to itself as “Brisbane’s best golf secret”. What was once rural land considered quite distant from the city, McLeod is now entrenched within suburbia while retaining a vivid sense of its past. The grain silo standing next to the second tee provides such a reminder.

As a layout, McLeod presents a solid challenge throughout. The land owns subtle characteristics, a smattering of water and occasional undulations with overall features that are gentle rather than severe. Not a course ‘carried’ by a few marquee holes, it instead provides a discernable ebb and flow for the whole 18. And that’s just how the ladies (and gents) like it.

McLeod Country Golf Club
(07) 3376 3666
mcleodgolf.com.au