A Few Games in Australia and New Zealand

[iSank]

We had some time off around the holidays so we did a cruise from Sydney to Auckland and enjoyed 8 rounds with my favorite golf partner, my wife. 

 12/20 Sydney The Lakes 1928 Michael Clayton

Our first game of the trip, the course was in beautiful shape, and it was a worthy challenge. Seemed like the 1st 9 was one giant sand trap, and the back 9 brought in the water obstacles. Would love to play this course again. 

 

12/24 Melbourne Sanctuary Lakes Greg Norman design 

A fun course, many sand traps, too many, but we had fun, and both played a good game which made for good tempo’d enjoyable golf. 

 

12/29 Stewart Island Ringa Ringa Heights Golf Club 6 holes 3 laps $10 pay is on an honor system, basically a slot in the wall of the office that says slide $10 here. Hilly, tall grass, tiny greens, set along a lovely coast line. Here’s us on the 1st hole with the ship anchored in the background. Yes the grass was a bit thick at points.

 

12/31 Akaroa golf club

If you ever looked at a hillside and thought you could never build a golf course there, well here they did build that course and while holes are set along the relatively flat near hill fields, several are build alongside, up, down, and cross over a fairly sized hill. 

 

1/1 Kaikoura Golf Club

Great people here, and on New Years day they had over 50 golfers out for a tournament, we were on our 13th hole when the shotgun start filled up the first 12 holes. Nice rolling fairways, set on a fairly easy 18 holes, but good fun. 

 

1/2 Purapuraumu Beach Golf Club designed by Mr. Alex Russell of Melbourne 

Took an hour bus ride from Wellington to play this enjoyable course. Set up very much like a Scottish Links Course where the holes seem dictated by where the sand dunes formed. The design maximizes these features, and with the wind blowing steady off the Tasman Sea set me up for glorious successes and utter failures but surely a fun day out. Good golf loving people at this club. 

 

 

1/5 Mount Maunganui Golf Club Mr. C Redhead 1935 designed the 1st 13 holes then the rest were developed after WW2. Set in 3 sets of 6. This was a Saturday and the all the members were out enjoying their fair track. Missing the fairway costs you here with rough and trees between parallel holes. The play was a little slow but we were able to meet 8 super nice club members in the groups ahead and behind us while waiting. 

 

1/6 Titirangi Golf Course, Auckland designed by Dr. Alister MacKenzie

Loved the course, tough course, every shot counts and there are 4 challenging par 3’s; par 70 (2 par 5s) for 18 and under handicaps and par 72 (4 par 5s) for all others. Would love to play this course again about 5 more times, maybe more. Here’s a tee on the back 9.

And then we ended the trip at the CFP championship.

 

Good to be home! Look forward to walking 9 later this week. 

Aloha,

iSank

Edited January 10, 2019 by iSank
Removed unnecessary content

[dennyjones]

So very cool.   I enjoyed reading about it.   Thanks for sharing.

[FLOG4]

Been to NZ and played a few times when there, Cape Kidnappers and Kauri Cliffs and one on the 90 mile beach Kaiari? ....Australia my primary bucket trip now....

 

[iSank]

2 hours ago, FLOG4 said:

Been to NZ and played a few times when there, Cape Kidnappers and Kauri Cliffs and one on the 90 mile beach Kaiari? ....Australia my primary bucket trip now....

 

Australia is a great trip. If you have any club memberships it seems like it could open a few doors but without that we still played some solid courses. The Lakes in Sydney is very good. We had a tee time at New SouthWales GC but a late minute push back of our tee time gave us the chance to visit The Lakes. Melbourne seemed to be one big sand trap but good fun golf.

our closest port to Cape Kidnappers was 3 hrs away, by the time we could have rented a car, and got there we would have had to return after a few holes. So the plan is to return to Auckland and play Titirangi a couple more times, and head North to Kauri and nearby north island golf and local qualities such as food and wine. 

Aloha to all,

iSank