New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, is many things.
It has been listed in the top-10 friendliest cities in the world and you will also find it on a roll call of 20 of the world’s best waterfront cities. Check out any list of cities from around the globe voted the most liveable, and you’re likely to find Auckland somewhere in the top-10.
But chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re a golfer and you’re in luck as Auckland is all of those aforementioned things, as well as being the gateway to one of the hottest golf destinations on the planet.
If – like nearly 75 percent of the international visitors embarking on a Kiwi journey of discovery – you touchdown at Auckland Airport, you can be on the 1st tee at the world-class Royal Auckland and Grange Golf Club less than 25 minutes after clearing customs.
Royal Auckland and Grange is the oldest ‘new’ golf club in New Zealand. As the name suggests, the current club was formed in 2015 through an amalgamation of neighbouring Royal Auckland (established in 1894) and The Grange (1924).
Two years later, The Grange course was closed, and construction began on what the club called ‘Project Legacy’ – a 27-hole layout spread across land previously occupied by both clubs and created by Chris Cochran of Jack Nicklaus Design.
The first phase of construction saw 13 new holes built on the former Grange course, the building of two long span bridges linking the two properties and a new clubhouse. The second phase saw the remaining 14 holes and a driving range constructed on Royal Auckland’s Middlemore property. There is also a large Himalayas-style putting course alongside the new clubhouse.
The merged club officially opened its 27 holes – with three nine-hole loops named Grange, Tamaki and Middlemore – in 2021 and soon gained a reputation for some of New Zealand’s best prepared playing surfaces – aided by state-of-the-art SubAir systems, like those found at Augusta National – beneath its greens and surrounds.
The Grange nine boasts arguably the club’s best golfing terrain with good undulations, while most holes feature macrocarpa trees. The Tamaki nine is split evenly between the Middlemore and Grange properties, with the par-3 6th hole being memorable for the tee shot that must be played over the Tamaki Estuary, a mangrove filled hazard that flows through the heart of the layout.
The Middlemore nine, which were completed last year, is very much a parkland setting with tree-lined fairways and slightly smaller greens. But the bunkering, greenside and otherwise, is dynamic and memorable. Many believe the Middlemore layout offers the best collection of holes – with the well-bunkered opening trio setting the scene –across the entire property.
Less than a year after the 2015 closure of The Grange ahead of its merger with Royal Auckland, another well-established club – just 20 minutes’ drive to the south – was embarking on a new era.
Windross Farm opened in 2016 after the members of Manukau Golf Club voted to sell their course, which had been their home since 1932, to residential developers and move to the new site six kilometres away.
The club moved from a tight, tree-lined parkland layout to a wide, windswept links style course designed by Brett Thomson, who had previously worked alongside John Darby in creating the highly acclaimed Jack’s Point and The Hills courses near Queenstown on the South Island.
Thomson and the construction team moved heaven and earth to transform the flat site into a dune-covered terrain, dotted with bumps, hollows, bunkers and swales. The entire site was sand capped during construction to ensure the links would lie well above the high water table and play firm and fast in all conditions.
Within a year of opening, Windross Farm hosted the LPGA sanctioned NZ Women’s Open and today it is generally regarded to be in the top-20 courses on the North Island.
You certainly won’t find another course in Auckland like it, nor will you find a restaurant like Orbit – New Zealand’s only rotating restaurant offering 360-degree views of the city and Hauraki Gulf from the top of Auckland’s Sky Tower.
I’m sure I was salivating in anticipation during the 30-minute drive from Windross Farm north into the city for dinner. I wasn’t disappointed either … citrus braised pork belly, followed by Hawkes Bay lamb rump accompanied by a brilliant merlot from the same region.
Delicious! A word that might also be apt in describing the next Auckland layout on the itinerary – Titirangi Golf Club, New Zealand’s only Dr Alister MacKenzie-designed course, which can be found 20 minutes’ drive from the Auckland CBD.
MacKenzie’s trip to Australia in 1926, to primarily design Royal Melbourne’s West course, ended with him designing or consulting on several more courses including Kingston Heath, Royal Adelaide, Victoria and New South Wales – all of which remain ranked among Australia’s finest courses.
Having learned the ‘Good Doctor’ was in Australia, the directors at Titirangi arranged for MacKenzie to stop over on his return voyage to the United States. Although the club had been in existence since 1909, the idea for redesigning the course had been proposed for several years prior to MacKenzie’s arrival in early 1927.
MacKenzie was confronted with a layout spread across a sometimes dramatically undulating landscape with several natural water hazards and pockets of native trees and shrubs. He stayed in Auckland for a month and oversaw the initial redesign work. Of his visit, he wrote: “on the Fringe of Heaven (better known in Maori as Titirangi) the ground was exceptionally well adapted for golf … it is undulating without being hilly and has many natural features such as ravines of a bold and impressive nature.”
By the mid-90s the course had become rundown and overgrown in many parts. English-born course designer Chris Pitman, a long-time devotee and student of MacKenzie’s work, was then commissioned by the club to return the layout to its former glory. Pitman did not change the routing, nor did he change any green sites. His major changes came in the form of modifying greens and bunkers as well as the removal of overgrown, and old, Pine trees that had encroached onto playing lines on many holes.
Using MacKenzie’s original sketches, Pitman embarked on an almost decade long redesign of Titirangi with outstanding results.
This tight little course is rich in risk/reward options. Most holes play uphill or downhill to smallish, steeply tilted and multi-tiered greens. MacKenzie – as we have come to expect with all his designs – wows all and sundry with his bunkering and his par-3s, with the quartet at Titirangi regarded, arguably, as the best in the country.
All four of Titirangi’s par-3s were left virtually untouched by Pitman with only some modification of the bunkering and the putting surfaces. The par-3s are so good the club puts up a ‘MacKenzie Award’ in certain competitions for any player who can par all four holes in their round.
In my opinion, the best of them is the 161-metre 11th, known as ‘Redan’. The green is perched on a plateau beyond a valley and above the level of the tee. The putting surface sits diagonally to your approach, which must carry three large, deep bunkers short of the green, which slopes gradually from back left to front right.
The lasting impression a round at Titirangi presents is one of fun and excitement. This is not a long course but the variety of shots you have to play across this wonderful golfing landscape will leave you wanting more.
Hitting the road again and it was a leisurely 70-minute drive north west of Titirangi to the beachside village of Muriwai, which is home to one of the North Island’s most underrated golfing gems.
Muriwai Golf Links follows in the great tradition of the world’s finest links courses that are found in Scotland and Ireland. Wedged between forest covered hills to the east and the sand dunes behind the popular Muriwai Beach to the west, Muriwai ticks all the boxes to be considered a wonderful links layout.
Although it is only 45km from the Auckland CBD, Muriwai gives the impression of being isolated and the only reason why it is here is the quality of the golfing land it covers.
The outward half is sparse, with wide fairways framed by long, wispy wild grasses. Most of the holes on this nine really rely on the wind to defend par, which is never a problem as calm, windless days are rare here.
However, there is a need to find the correct playing line on each hole to leave a straightforward approach to the small, subtle-sloping greens.
If you make a good score on the front nine, you will have to try and hang on to that throughout the more challenging and undulating back nine where outcrops of ti-tree and long stands of Pine trees narrow the fairways and swallow mis-hit shots. Laid over and between sand dunes, the inward half is Muriwai at its best with pot bunkers dotting the landscape, mounds and hollows around greens and rippled fairways presenting a variety of lies for approach shots.
It is on the back nine where you will find Muriwai’s hardest driving hole, the 395-metre par-4 15th hole, with trees and scrub lining both sides of the driving zone. Ideally, a drive into the right half of the fairway will get some added distance from the downhill slope of a small hill. This line from the tee also leaves a good angle into the pear-shaped green where pot bunkers, left and right, guard the green. Find one of these sandy hazards and you will be odds-on not to make a par here.
Muriwai is a very good layout, which is only enhanced when Mother Nature lends a helping hand and produces a windy day so you can get the full links experience.
It is a very different seaside golf experience 45 minutes’ drive north of Auckland’s CBD to the eastern shore on the tip of the Whangaparoa Peninsula and the Gulf Harbour Country Club. Here is a location that is not only on good land for a golf course, but it also offers views across Waitemata Harbour back to the City of Sails.
The layout was designed by renowned course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. If you like any of his Australian portfolio of courses including Joondalup, Meadow Springs, Cape Schanck and the Old Course at The National, you will really enjoy Gulf Harbour.
The best of these city and harbour views comes from behind Gulf Harbour’s 12th green. But these postcard images are simply the entrée for the visual main course that is offered a few holes later as the layout winds its way out to and across the top of cliffs, before turning back inland to the clubhouse.
This is a quality Trent Jones’ design, which covers beautifully rolling terrain on the outward holes and becomes even more dramatic on the inward half. In fact, the back nine experience is worth the green fee alone.
It was time to put Auckland’s northern outskirts in the rear vision mirror and trek north to discover a fantastic mix of world ranked layouts, including New Zealand’s newest wonder course, Te Arai Links, which is a scenic 90-minute drive north of Auckland’s CBD.
The eagerly anticipated South Course at Te Arai Links officially opened for play late last year, with many suggesting this stretch of North island coastline will soon offer some of the best links golf anywhere on the planet and will rival California’s famous Monterey Peninsula as a golfing experience.
Designed by Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw, the South Course at Te Arai Links covers some of the finest links land identified in more than a century. The routing plays largely out and back, in the traditional links style, amid the dunes just south of its sister course, the private Tara Iti Golf Club.
Te Arai’s North Course — created by course architect Tom Doak, who also designed Tara Iti — is scheduled to open in October this year.
“We invite the Monterey Peninsula comparison because we believe it’s apt,” says Jim Rohrstaff, a partner in Te Arai Links and its managing director. With partner Ric Kayne, Rohrstaff was also part of the development team at Tara Iti, which is New Zealand’s No.1 ranked course.
“Our good friend Mike Keiser (the visionary behind the world class Bandon Dunes) believes the South Course has as much ocean frontage as any golf course in the world,” Rohrstaff said.
“It’s that connectivity with the sea that distinguishes the South Course from most links experiences, from the golf experience in Monterey, even from Tara Iti just up the shoreline. On the South Course, the beach is just so close. There’s the visual sensation of actually seeing the waves crashing. But golfers can also hear them crashing — on more than half the holes.”
Coore and Crenshaw had been charged with delivering a layout that is strategic but wide and playable, where angles and position matter as much as having fun.
Right: Te Arai Links North Course. PHOTO: Supplied/Ricky Robinson.
“Bill and Ben did an incredible job of maximising this long stretch of shoreline. The connection with the sea is so intimate,” Rohrstaff said. “Yet they did equally well in creating a world-class course where people never feel kicked in the teeth, even in a two-club wind.
“Ultimately, the speed and firmness will prove the real test out there. Right now, it’s as playable and ‘gettable’ as it will ever be. Three years from now? Different story.”
The South Course was created alongside a collection of facilities custom-curated for Te Arai Links’ mix of resort guests and members. Off course, the focal point is a 2.5-acre putting green – one of the largest in the world – named The Playground, which wraps around Ric’s (the pizza barn) and sits adjacent to The South clubhouse and The Range, a practice facility featuring six template greens modelled on classic course architecture from around the world.
Coore sets the South Course favourably beside any of the dozen works currently ranked within the Top-100 Courses in the World, though none of those layouts feature so many holes in such intimate proximity to the Pacific Ocean. And don’t ask him to pick favourites.
“We’ve always struggled when people ask, ‘What’s the signature hole?’ To us, that means one is so much better than the others,” Coore said. “That question also requires that I be 100 percent objective, and I can’t do that either. Not at Te Arai Links.
“This is going to sound like diplomatic jargon, but in my own mind – being as critical and objective as I can be – there aren’t two-three ‘wow’ holes at Te Arai Links that are so much better than the others. There just aren’t.
“However, there are, without a doubt, a great many gorgeous golf holes out there: 4-5-6, 7-8-9, 11, 13, 15-16-17…
“People will surely talk about all the par-3s, and they’ll take amazing pictures there, too. I just hope they notice those par-3s are all oriented in such a way that golfers always see the ocean – even though they all play in different directions. And one of the most interesting short holes is 12, which plays away from the ocean.
“I think Willie Nelson once said, ‘all you can do is create something you feel is good, throw it out there, and someone will tell you if it’s good or not’.”
Like most Coore and Crenshaw designs, the South Course is a product of its unique environment. Yet that assessment goes beyond matters of terrain: Coore admits it’s impossible to ignore the presence of so highly regarded a course as Tara Iti just up the beach – to say nothing of the adjoining North Course coming online later this year.
Equally difficult to ignore: the fact that Tom Doak designed each of them.
“I think there’s a huge appeal in having Doak next door, for me personally and I think Ben would agree,” Coore said. “We had that opportunity at Streamsong, Barnbougle and Bandon, of course. So, this has happened before.
“In each instance, it’s been a huge honour. Of course, there is a little good-natured competitiveness, too. You don’t want to build a course that’s not up to par with others in the complex.”
Of course, it was Tara Iti that first drew the golfing world’s focus onto this incredible stretch of the North Island’s east coastline when it opened for play in 2015. Once the coastal site was cleared of non-native pines and wattle, Doak devised his routing among the exposed sand dunes, while the sandy site was revegetated with fescue and native plants like spinifex. It wasn’t until after construction started and images started appearing on social media that Tara Iti began waltzing its way onto golfer’s bucket lists across the globe.
The hype and the fanfare have since been validated by major golf publications ranking Tara Iti in the top-30 courses in the world. And if you have hopes of playing this wonderful course, be aware that it is a very private member’s course but there are limited one-off visitor tee times, which must be organised well in advance.
It’s not so hard to get a game at Mangawhai Golf Club, an easy 15-minute drive from Tara Iti and north across Mangawhai Harbour. That said, you simply must have a hit here if you’re in the area.
Established in 1979, Mangawhai stretches to only 5,466 metres from the back pegs, which, sight unseen, would suggest a relatively short and easy 18-hole excursion. Not so. In fact. Mangawhai punches well above its weight and was once regarded one of the hardest courses in New Zealand.
It is best described as an inland links with fast-running fairways and large, firm and quick rolling greens. It is these elements that make it difficult to maintain control over your ball and give the Mangawhai layout its bite, despite it being a short journey.
Its sternest test is early in the round at the sharp dogleg right par-4 2nd. A swamp lies beyond the tree line left of the 387-metre hole, while there is also plenty of tree trouble to be found right of the fairway, which curves around sand hills. A strong drive just around the corner of the dogleg will leave a mid-iron approach to the large sloping green featuring a false front. If you can avoid a big number on this tough test, so early in the round, you’re in for a good day.
The par-3s here are also a treat with the diminutive drop-shot 13th hole, of just 135 metres from the tips, being a standout for mine. The two-tiered green has plenty of slopes to consider and while you may think the bunker at the back of the green is not in play it is. This is a little hole with a big links heart and was great fun to play.
The 175km scenic trek north via State Highway 1 from Mangawhai to the heart of the Bay of Islands region is beautiful. There are plenty of natural attractions to stopand enjoy along the way including the picturesque Whangarei Falls or the Waiomio glow worm caves.
With all due respect to these attractions, there is only one thing a golfer wants to see whilst in this area of the North Island and that’s the world-renowned Kauri Cliffs.
When Kauri Cliffs opened for play in 2000 it immediately elbowed its way onto the list of the world’s top-100 courses. It’s not hard to see why.
The late American hedge fund guru Julian Robertson bought the 4,000-acre sheep and cattle farm overlooking the Cavalli Islands with a dream to develop a world class course and guest accommodation. He succeeded, perhaps even beyond his own expectations, and further inspired him to also develop Kauri Cliffs’ sister course, Cape Kidnappers.
More than 800 of the 4,000 acres of the property are devoted to the layout, which was designed by American David Harmon, who had previously worked on projects with the Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer course design companies.
When I last visited Kauri Cliffs I was the first player out on the course and more were not expected for several hours. It is not often you have such a stunning golf course all to yourself, where often the only sound you hear between shots is the whistling wind.
The unhurried nature of a round at Kauri Cliffs gives you time to soak in the spectacular holes Harmon created as well as the postcard views of the Cavalli Islands.
There are so many good holes at Kauri Cliffs it is hard to single out a few but the long par-3s – the 7th and 14th holes – really impressed. Each hole clings to the cliff tops and, despite being of similar length, they run in opposite directions, while the 7th – which was redesigned by Rees Jones in 2014 – is slightly uphill and the 14th is downhill. In fact, the 14th starts an incredible run of spectacular holes back to the colonial-style clubhouse.
Kauri Cliffs isn’t the only stunning oceanside golf resort in the far north of the island.
The Carrington Estate is a grand property occupying 3,000 acres of stunning seaside land on the Karikari Peninsula – about 80 minutes’ drive north of Kauri Cliffs – and is home to a winery, luxury resort and New Zealand’s northernmost golf course.
The highly rated course lies between the sweeping ocean views to the north and west, and hillside vineyards to the east. You might suspect this is a links layout given its oceanside location, but it is not. It is surprisingly more like an inland parkland course with large naturally occurring water hazards and a rolling landscape dictating the flow of holes.
Developed by American investment banker Paul Kelly, Carrington was extensively remodelled by designer Matt Dye and opened for play in December 2003. Dye – a third generation member of the world-renowned Dye family of golf course designers, having followed the family tradition established by grandfather Paul, his late father Roy and his uncle, Pete Dye – began his own design business in 2002. Carrington was his first solo project.
The layout covers beautiful land, where the views, especially from the clubhouse, towards the 15-metre-high sand dunes backing Karikari Beach and Great Exhibition Bay, are superb.
The natural contours of the land and the length of the layout – stretched to a 6,417-metre, par-72, from the tips – combine to create a stern challenge for better players. Casual players are able play from two other teeing options that present a less demanding length.
While the length adds to the course’s bite, especially on windy days of which there are many, it is some of Carrington’s short holes that will impress. The 301-metre par-4 5th is a wonderfully strategic hole. The fairway cascades down dramatically from tee-to-green and, depending on the wind direction, you can hit any club from a driver to a mid-iron to find a plateau en route to the putting surface.
The 6th hole, a 350-metre par-4, and the par-3 7th both bring water into play as they skirt a large lake. The 6th hole demands a tee short to carry the lake for a short distance before finding a narrow stretch of fairway. Despite measuring 75 metres shorter than the longest par-4 on the layout, this slight dogleg left hole still rates as Carrington’s hardest.
At the following hole, the tee shot must carry the entire width of the lake to reach the green, which is two thirds surrounded by water. From the shortest tee it is but a lob wedge from 55 metres but from the tips a solid blow from 165 metres is needed to safely find the putting surface.
Once you have found your way to Carrington Estate, you should stay a while. The resort boasts beautifully appointed and spacious Lodge Rooms, as well as three-bedroom villas and luxury houses offering views over the course, vineyards and ocean.
Having reached New Zealand’s northernmost course, it was time to point the car south for a five-hour haul back to Auckland, a good nights’ sleep and a further three-hour drive the following day to the scenic Lake Taupo region and two highly acclaimed layouts.
Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary was built in 1970 by the New Zealand government’s Tourist Hotel Corporation as part of its plan to attract international visitors, and golfers, to the Lake Taupo area.
Course designer Commander John Harris collaborated with five-time Open champion Peter Thomson and then U.S Tour player, Mike Wolveridge, on the project. It would become Thomson and Wolveridge’s first design project and they returned to upgrade the layout in 1997.
Wairakei has since matured into a visually striking and challenging layout. Set in a valley surrounded by pine forest covered mountains, the layout is immaculately presented and complements a superb design.
The terrain becomes more dramatic away from the clubhouse as the holes wind across, up and down the foothills, while the bunkering is not overdone and strategically placed. All the greenside bunkers are steep faced and lined with the trunks of native punga ferns.
This course is also an incredible wildlife sanctuary. A two-metre high fence was constructed around the course’s boundary to create a predator-free environment and today ducks, pheasants, takahe, deer and New Zealand’s national bird, the kiwi, now thrive.
Wairakei’s nearest golfing neighbour is arguably one of the finest Jack Nicklaus ever designed.
The Kinloch Club – about 20 minutes’ drive from the tourist town of Taupo – is a links style layout that is a real departure from Nicklaus’ trademark designs. Instead of the American parkland style course he has taken around the globe, Nicklaus aimed to create a Scottish links. The bunkering is rugged and varies greatly in shape, depth and size, while the rolling fairways of the front nine become more dramatic in their elevation change.
The course, which opened all 18 holes for play in December 2007, is laid out beneath a steep cattle covered range and it is easy to see Nicklaus has tried to reflect the rugged nature of the range into his creation.
There are several holes that will live long in the memory – the 5th and 6th are two dynamic short par-4s, while the 512-metre 8th has gained a reputation for being one of the best par-5s in New Zealand. The driving zone is flanked by sand and then the fairway splits in two providing a high and low route to the green, which is quite wide but only 26 metres at its deepest.
On the back nine, the par-4 13th is an absolute gem, as is the par-3 17th which is arguably the toughest of Kinloch’s one-shotters as it calls for a long shot to a green that is protected by a bunker left and features steep drop-off slopes short, long and right.
Having come this far there was no turning back now and I quite happily pushed on knowing the next course on my hit list was the Tom Doak-designed Cape Kidnappers, some three hours’ drive away on the coast just south of Hawkes Bay.
Cape Kidnappers has been one of the golf world’s most talked about courses since it opened nearly two decades ago.
Of course, any designer could have put their name to a decent course in this spectacular location. But owner, the late Julian Robertson (who also developed Kauri Cliffs), pulled off a masterstroke in commissioning Doak to create Cape Kidnappers, which is far more than a decent course … it is spectacular.
Doak’s minimalist design draws plenty out of the location and provides each golfer who tees it up with a thrill ride they will never forget. Faced with having to route the course along, and across, fingers of land surrounded by jagged cliffs that stretch 150 metres (500 feet) above the ocean, Doak has created holes that are not only playable (nearly all the long holes play with the prevailing wind) but are a lot of fun to play.
It is the dramatic holes away from the cliffs, often overlooked for their quality, that you will be pleasantly surprised by. This stunning terrain, the deep dramatic bunkering and some of Doak’s best green complexes all produce a brilliant collection of inland holes more akin to the heathland style of course architecture, rather than links.
At the request of the owners, Doak returned to Cape Kidnappers in 2022 to oversee a major renovation of his creation, which included the re-grassing of all 18 fairways and greens.
“We were determined to restore the firm and fast turf conditions that Doak first created — because bounce and roll are vital to the strategic function of links designs, heathland designs and one-of-a-kind hybrids like Cape Kidnappers,” Director of Golf, Ray Geffre, said.
“Working with Doak and ace shaper Angela Moser, course superintendent Brad Sim oversaw the work. We rebuilt the putting surfaces from 10 inches down and Angela put the contours back exactly as they’d been before.
“Re-grassing the greens at Cape and addressing our thatch problem was pretty straightforward. But the fairways were a huge undertaking — just an enormous volume of turf for an in-house crew to peel back and replant.”
Doak, whilst being a great designer, also has a trained eye for great courses. He, like his collaborative designer on Barnbougle Dunes, Mike Clayton, hold the layout at Paraparaumu Beach Golf Club in the highest esteem.
Doak has even listed Paraparaumu (pronounced Para-param) in his top-14 links courses in the world, alongside the likes of the Old Course at St Andrews, Royal County Down, Royal Dornoch and Ballybunion.
Designed by Alister MacKenzie’s Australian protégé, Alex Russell, in 1949, Paraparaumu covers rugged, windswept Kapiti Coast dunesland, about 45 minutes’ drive north of the nation’s capital, Wellington, or about four hours’ drive south of Cape Kidnappers.
Despite the encroachment on its borders of the surrounding beachside suburb, the bones of the course have changed very little since Russell signed off on his creation. But it became apparent during the 2002 New Zealand Open – when Tiger Woods made his first appearance in the country – some of the layout’s links character had been lost.
But superior presentation and changes to the course set-up in the years since have recaptured its links roots and character and today is widely regarded as the best links course in New Zealand.
General Manager and Course Superintendent Leo Barber is a keen student of the game and under his management the course set-up is more reflective of Russell’s guidance, greens surrounds have been closely shaved to place a premium on greater accuracy on approach shots. These tight cropped areas drop steeply off the edge of elevated greens that now play firm and fast, just like the fairways. Several deep bunkers around the course have been revetted, making them formidable hazards.
While the course can never be lengthened, it doesn’t need extra length to be a tough challenge especially when the wind blows with any kind of strength.
Some of the best holes are on the inward nine with the 404-metre par-4 17th being a standout. The hole features a split fairway where you can shorten the hole by using the right fairway, but this leaves a harder second shot to a green that sits diagonally to the approach. Driving left leaves a long more straight-forward shot to a green that slopes away left, right and back.
Fans of traditional rugged links courses will simply love Paraparaumu, but if your taste is more satisfied by well-manicured beauty, then Royal Wellington Golf Club should be on your itinerary.
Royal Wellington is one of New Zealand’s most beautiful and historic golf courses.
Having been founded in 1895, the club moved to its current site at Heretaunga on the banks of the beautiful Hutt River – about 30 minutes’ drive north of Wellington’s CBD – in 1908.
The esteemed club hosted its first of many New Zealand Open championships just four years later.
In the years that followed, some history making championships were contested at Wellington, which was granted the ‘Royal’ charter in 2004.
The layout remained basically unaltered for 64 years until l972 when the club, having purchased adjoining land, laid out a new l8-hole course designed by Sloan Morpeth, which opened for play in early 1974.
But the evolution and growth of the par-72 saw the course become a victim of its heavily-treed landscape and by the early 2000s, dense stands of oak, maple, elm and macrocarpa lining the fairways had encroached into the playing lines.
In 2010 course architecture team Greg Turner and Scott Macpherson presented a design plan to the club that ultimately led to a new course being built, which opened for play in 2014. Only five holes are routed across the same terrain, in the same direction, as they were before the rebuild. All 18 greens were rebuilt.
Turner and Macpherson’s creation has certainly improved the quality of a round here. While the landscape generally remains relatively flat and easy-to-walk, the design duo massaged subtle undulations into the fairways adding a level of strategy to the golf that had previously been missing at Royal Wellington. Streams and marshland across the course have also been better incorporated into the parkland layout.
A great example of this can be found on the 499-metre par-5 4th hole where questions are asked of your game on each shot from tee-to-green. From the tee, you are confronted by a fairway that is split in two by a creek. You can try and carry the water and avoid a well-placed bunker on the left or take the shorter option to the right side of the fairway, which is a decision easily influenced by the wind direction. Over the stream, the fairway cambers towards a lake and narrows dramatically as it gets closer to the green. The wide but shallow green lies nearly at right angles to the line of play, makes hitting the green with a long approach a tough ask.
Royal Wellington has well and truly moved on from being just a ‘pretty face’. The now decade old rebuild has provided much substance and enjoyment to a round across the flats next to the Hutt River.
WHERE TO PLAY
1. ROYAL AUCKLAND & GRANGE GC
Green fee: On application from member’s guest and international visitors.
2. WINDROSS FARM
Green fee: NZ$165.
3. TITIRANGI GC
Green fee: NZ$200.
4. MURIWAI GC
Green fee: NZ$140.
5. GULF HARBOUR CC
Green fee: NZ$140 (Mon-Thu); NZ$200 (Fri-Sun).
www.gulfharbourcountryclub.co.nz
6. TE ARAI LINKS
Green fee: NZ$650 (high season).
7. TARA ITI
Green fee: Private club. Upon application for a tee time.
8. MANGAWHAI GC
Green fee: NZ$110.
9. KAURI CLIFFS
Green fee: NZ$692 (high season).
10. CARRINGTON ESTATE
Green fee: NZ$180.
11. WAIRAKEI GOLF + SANCTUARY
Green fee: NZ$270.
12. THE KINLOCH CLUB
Green fee: NZ$500 (high season).
13. CAPE KIDNAPPERS
Green fee: NZ$692 (high season).
14. PARAPARAUMU BEACH GC
Green fee: NZ$190.
www.paraparaumubeachgolfclub.co.nz
15. ROYAL WELLINGTON GC
Green fee: NZ$275.
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