The Cut - Port Bouvard

The list of Australia's must play courses continues to grow. As Brendan James writes, Western Australia's newest layout will attract golfers from across the globe to sample its delights.

Australia’s third golf course building boom in less than a century may well, in time, prove to be this country’s most fruitful period in terms of the layouts being produced. In the classic era of design in the 1920s, the greats like Royal Melbourne, Royal Adelaide, Kingston Heath and NSW were born. The age of resort courses emerged during the boom of the 1980s, with Queensland being the centre of attention. The current golden era of course construction, already into its fifth year, has spawned some memorable layouts that every Australian golfer should play at least once.

In Victoria, there are the Moonah Links courses, The National Golf Club’s Moonah and Ocean courses and across the bay on the Bellarine Peninsula, Thirteenth Beach. Heading north, Brookwater, just south of Brisbane, is an experience – as is the seaside links at Barnbougle Dunes, on the north coast of Tasmania. Out west, Kennedy Bay has won many plaudits. These courses are still in their infancy and are destined to only get better with age.

Now you can add The Cut at Port Bouvard, in Western Australia, to this prestigious list of post-2000 built courses, that should be experienced before falling off the perch. Laid on and around sand dunes at Port Bouvard, just south of Mandurah and about 70 minutes’ drive from Perth’s CBD, The Cut is the centrepiece of a massive residential and resort development, wedged between the Indian Ocean and Peel Inlet.

The par-72 is the first full 18-hole design of Sydney-based designer James Wilcher, who worked on the Greg Norman design team for ten years and recently oversaw the opening of his second completed layout, Pacific Dunes on NSW’s mid north coast.

Wilcher had two contrasting landscapes with which to work. The opening hole leads straight from the clubhouse to the ocean and the following three holes run parallel to the beach across gently undulating land. The 2nd and 3rd holes are terrific short par-4s, where a narrow strip of dense scrub to the left is all that separates the fairway from the beach. The views are worth every cent of a million dollars and can easily distract from the task of making par or better.

Fore more information visit: www.the-cut.com.au


Read the complete review in the September 2005 issue of Golf Australia magazine.

Order your copy at www.mymagazines.com.au