Outside of LIV’s annual descent on to the sleepy city of Adelaide, Australia’s best golf courses don’t get the TV time or mainstream attention they perhaps once did.
The days when the likes of Tiger Woods and co. would regularly head Down Under for the country’s biggest golf tournaments are now long gone, and while Rory McIlroy is signed up to headline this year’s Australian Open, the nation’s plethora of incredible courses often don’t get the mainstream attention they deserve – a crying shame as Australia truly has some of the best golf courses in the world, including one routinely mentioned among the world’s top 5.
As such, we tasked GolfMagic’s Reviews Editor and resident Aussie with putting a list together of 10 of Australia’s true bucket list courses everyone should aim to play on a trip Down Under, from the choice picks on Melbourne’s legendary Sandbelt to the stunning, remote links of Tasmania and King Island.
All green fees listed are international rates in Australian Dollars.
Courtesy Royal Melbourne Golf Club
Royal Melbourne
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Green fees (weekday): $850
Royal Melbourne is, and likely always will be, the benchmark by which all other Australian courses are measured, both its West and East courses routinely cited among the world’s 100 best (the West is among the top 5). The pinnacle of Melbourne sandbelt golf, in which open parkland tracks are pockmarked by deep natural bunkers hewn into Melbourne’s naturally sandy soil, Tiger Woods himself has noted Royal Melbourne as one of the world’s greatest tracks, and the West Course will host this year’s Australian Open. Maybe that’s why Rory was so keen to come back.
Visit Royal Melbourne
Courtesy New South Wales Golf Club
New South Wales
Location: Sydney, New South Wales
Green fees (weekday): Approx. $350
Sydney has dozens of golf courses, most of which play inland, however the best golf in the city is found towards the coast, the crown jewel of Sydney golf being New South Wales. An expansive clifftop course set on a dramatic stretch of coastline overlooking Botany Bay, it’s Australia’s answer to Cypress Point (in fact it was originally laid out by Cypress Point designer Dr. Alistair Mackenzie), with rugged terrain and linksy stretches often playing directly into or over the Pacific Ocean. As such, when the wind is blowing it’s among the most brutal stretches of golf anywhere in the southern hemisphere, but also the most rewarding.
Visit New South Wales
Courtesy Barnbougle
Barnbougle
Location: Bridport, Tasmania
Green fees (weekday): $250-$265
Opened in 2004, Barnbougle took a remote, largely unvisited strip of North Tasmania’s coastline and turned it into a links golf nirvana. Today, it houses three of Australia’s best golf courses, two of which, known as the Dunes and the Lost Farm, are easily within the country’s top 10. The nation’s purest seaside links, it’s arguably the Australian piece de resistance of famed designer Tom Doak, routing its way through towering dunes and windswept grasses.
Visit Barnbougle
Courtesy Cape Wickham Golf Links
Cape Wickham
Location: King Island, Tasmania
Green fees (weekday): $235
Australia’s most rugged links and one of its most visually captivating, Cape Wickham lies on King Island, a isle perched in the Bass Straight between Victoria and the island state of Tasmania, and works its way predominantly a previously baron stretch of its coastline punctuated only by a Turnberry-esque lighthouse sitting just beyond the 18th green. Accessible only by a dedicated flight from either Melbourne or Tasmania, Australian golf doesn’t get much more atmospheric than this.
Visit Cape Wickham
Courtesy Kingston Heath Golf Club
Kingston Heath Golf Club
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Green fees (weekday): $700
The only golf course with a realistic shot of wresting the title of Australia’s best from Royal Melbourne, some who play Kingston Heath actually find it preferable to its more illustrious cousin down the road despite the fact that both perfectly embody quintessential Melbourne Sandbelt golf. Slightly more compact than Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath was also altered by Dr Alister MacKenzie and carries many of his hallmarks, with gorgeous natural bunkering and stunning heathland terrain.
Visit Kingston Heath Golf Club
Courtesy St Andrews Beach Golf Club
St Andrews Beach
Location: Frankston, Victoria
Green fees (weekday): $125
The Mornington Peninsula sits an hours drive or so below south of Melbourne, and offers some of the country’s finest golf combining coastal vistas, linsky layouts and the same Sandbelt geology as the Victorian capital. St Andrews Beach is the arguably the region’s finest coastal course, hugging the very southern tip of the Peninsula and, as Tom Doak’s second collaboration with former tour player Michael Clayton (the other being Barnbougle), one of the most captivating seaside links in the country.
Visit St Andrews Beach
Courtesy Peninsula Kingswood Country Golf Club
Peninsula Kingswood
Location: Fingal, Victoria
Green fees: $550
Peninsula Kingswood sits at the very southern tip of Melbourne’s sandbelt and, as the name suggests, the border of where Melbourne ends and the Mornington begins. As such, at Peninsula you get a little bit of what makes both golfing areas so special, its North and South courses combining to provide both a pure sandbelt experience first and then a more open, strategic test on the other.
Visit Peninsula Kingswood
Courtesy Victoria Golf Club
Victoria Golf Club
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Green fees: Approx. $550
Victoria’s signature golf club is yet another Sandbelt gem, located quite literally across the road from Royal Melbourne in the city’s southern suburbs. Michael Clayton, who we’ve mentioned here a couple of times, took on the task of bringing out the best in Alister MacKenzie’s time-honoured over the last few years, rejuvenating the bunkering and planting more trees to make it a purer, more picturesque test of Melbourne golf.
Visit Victoria Golf Club
Courtesy Royal Adelaide
Royal Adelaide
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Green fees (weekday): $625
Royal Adelaide is one of Australia’s most unique inland courses, and certainly the only of its kind to carry a Royal Title (granted in 1923 by King George V, in case you’re wondering). Gary Player won the second of his seven Australian Open titles here in 1962, and the inland links layout, compared flatteringly by Top 100 courses as reminiscent as that of Royal Lytham & St Annes, runs counter to the parkland style that tends to typify most inland Australian golf.
Visit Royal Adelaide
Courtesy Greg Norman Golf Design
Ellerston
Location: Ellerston, New South Wales
Green fees (weekday): POA
Not a lot of Australians have heard of Ellerston, owing mostly to the fact that apart from the exception of Royal Sydney, Ellerston is perhaps the most private course in the country and absolutely the most secluded. Designed by Greg Norman and built as a private playground for Australian media magnate Kerry Packer, Ellerston lies in the Hunter Valley wine region around 90 minutes north of Sydney, and is accessible strictly by booking either a one or two day experience which includes transfers to and from the Harbour City.
How much does a round of golf at Ellerston cost, exactly? It’s hard to say, as green fees aren’t listed anywhere online. But it’s probably fair to say that if you need to ask, you can’t afford it.
Visit Ellerston