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 overwhelming highlight of this layout is the quality and variety of its holes. Renowned throughout New Zealand as a tough test of links golf, Muriwai is a certainly a course of two contrasting nines.

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.

Muriwai GC: PHOTO: NZ Tourism.

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.

Tara Iti. PHOTO: Supplied/Ricky Robinson.

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.